


Cage the Ghost

by Jakallx



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Days of Future Past style time travel, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Mind Control, Reaper as an Artificial Intelligence, Reaper struggles as a human, Redemption, Time Travel, bad philosophical conversations, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2018-12-02 10:29:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 54,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11507532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jakallx/pseuds/Jakallx
Summary: After Zurich, Talon found a storm of damaged nanites, curling and twisting and somehow alive and dead at the same time. Imagine their surprise when, after inserting Artificial Intelligence Codename: Reaper into the dying nanites, they discovered it was Blackwatch Commander Gabriel Reyes's body.For the last five years Reaper has stalked the fallen members of Overwatch. Now he's found the one he's been looking for. A Soldier, cornered and bleeding out in one of Overwatch's abandoned warehouses.Then, a flash of blue erupts from the Soldier's hand and Reaper is falling. Through the past, right back to the start.Time is a fickle thing, and it seems to have a vendetta against Reaper as he is forced to live through Reyes's life. Start to unfortunate end...Only problem is, the ghost of a dead man has also decided to come along for the ride. Oh, and Reaper might just be falling in love with Jack Morrison.Days of Future Past style time travel AU with redemption, existential dread, and a sarcastic ghost that wants his body back.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Reaper76 Big Bang! 
> 
> With art by [Liripip](http://liripip.tumblr.com/) and [Ohappyfair](http://ohappyfair.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Massive thanks to [Princeinky](http://princeinky.tumblr.com/) for beta reading this. Couldn't have finished it without your kind and wonderful comments.

I'll tell the truth, I promise you  
This world may frown upon the things I have you do  
But I got taste, and I got style  
I know the twists and turns to make your life worth-

         - Raury. _Devil’s Whisper._

 

Reaper follows the trail of blood through the old Overwatch storehouse. Lit only by the moonlight streaming through the high windows, the blood is black against the dusty concrete floor. The trail weaves in and out of shelves stacked with abandoned technology. He breathes in, smells the fear that lingers in the air, the metallic scent of blood and shotgun smoke stings his damaged nostrils.

He doesn’t bother to hide the sound of his footsteps, prefers his prey to know he is coming for it. The hunt is about to end, for one of them at least.

He finally spots the fallen Soldier at the end of one of the stacks. The trail leads to a puddle of black ink, slowly spreading out to meet the shadows cast by the shelves. Beyond them, he hears the sound of ragged breathing, wet and painful.

As he approaches the old Soldier looks up. Reaper expects to see fear, defiance even, in the Soldier’s face. Instead, a sense of utter defeat lines his body. One hand clutches at the wound in his chest, trying to staunch the blood, while the other lies curled into his side.

Reaper tilts his head to the side, regarding his prey. He knows it is the infamous Jack Morrison beneath the red mask. He also knows that Jack Morrison believes Gabriel Reyes lies beneath his mask.

He would be wrong.

Reaper calls to the nanobots that make up his being. He claws at them, scrapes them together, forces them into the shape that he wants. Feels every inch of pain as they multiply and divide faster and faster, coalescing into a shotgun which he levels at the Soldier’s face.

Gabriel Reyes was dead. And now it was time for Jack Morrison to die too. The last of Overwatch’s sad legacy.

“Wait.” The word is ragged. Spat out of a ruptured lung.

Reaper’s finger twitches on the trigger.

“Please. Gabe. Come back. I know you’re in there,” the Soldier chokes out. He finally raises his head so that the red of his visor is looking up, straight at Reaper.

Reaper shakes his head, amused. “Poor little Soldier. Your lost love is never coming back. He died with the rest of Overwatch.” He smiles, beneath the mask as his finger tightens on the trigger.

Just as the shotgun clicks over the Soldier uncurls his arm and something rolls out of his hand and onto the floor.

Something round.

Something blue.

Something clicks.

The blast of the shotgun sounds simultaneously with the flash of blue that lights the entire warehouse from within. Reaper grunts, blinded, and takes a step back in surprise.

He blinks furiously, tries to get the colours of the world to come back into focus. Shakes his head as he stumbles backwards and sees nothing but blue.

It becomes brighter and brighter until eventually it is white. A ringing begins in his ears, a deep whine that fills the void of this strange white place.

Suddenly, his foot cannot find purchase. He over-balances, reaches out but there’s nothing to hold on to.

He falls.

Reaper feels himself being ripped apart. He grasps at the shreds of his body. Tendrils of his being as they come undone. A sharp panic rises, his mind spiking, making him flail as he tries to hold onto himself. This shouldn’t be happening. He can’t lose control. He can’t.

He can’t…

He—

Reaper feels nothing.

For a second that could be a lifetime, he feels nothing. There is no pain. There is no darkness. There is nothing.

 


	2. The Child

Since a kid, I've been haunted by visions of death  
Such a trip, now it's normal, I customed the grip  
Think they gon' know, think the door the haunters ain't left

                                          - Kid Cudi. _Baptised in Fire._

 

And then he slams into the world again. Colors come flooding back, blinding him more effectively than the white space ever could. He is overwhelmed by them.

Reaper blinks.

The colors focus. The world becomes sharp. Defined. Real again. He is looking down at a collection of brown and white and blue and pink.

He blinks again.

A human child is in his arms. Or more accurately, a baby. Wrapped in a blanket. Its face is scrunched up, entirely unimpressed with whatever it was looking at.

_Him._

He tilts his head to the side, trying to figure out why he is holding a baby and what he should do with it.

And that’s when he realises.

There’s no pain. His mind is wound tight with the expectation that he would burst apart into a billion warring nanites at any second. His shoulders are braced against it. His hands tight claws, digging into the baby’s blanket, waiting for the pain to come back. Waiting for the nanites to break his fragile treaty of control.

But there is no pain.

It doesn’t come back. He doesn’t need to hold himself together.

For the first time in his short existence, Reaper is able to just _be_.

He blinks. Feels his eyes widen in wonder. Lets himself relax his tight hold on the smoke and the rage and the fire. Because it isn’t there anymore. His lips curl up.

And he stares at this strange human child. It has long lashes and a button nose. As he stares, it opens its eyes and looks right back at him. They are big and brown and strangely bright and full of life. The baby blinks at him and its face breaks into a smile.

The ringing in Reaper’s ears grows louder and louder until it becomes unbearable. Then, just like the colors, sound pops into focus.

“Look, Gabi. She likes you.”

Soft Spanish. The words wrap around him, warm as a summer breeze. He looks up.

Towering above him is a woman. Dark skin, wide face, with puffy black hair tied atop her head, she smiles down at him. _Smiles_. At _him_.

Reaper panics.

He looks back down at the baby, realising with a growing sense of horror that she is enormous. And then back up at the woman. Is he lying on the floor? Why is she so big? Reaper feels like he is falling again, reeling. Flailing. His mind claws at reality, tries to find some explanation for where he was. He scrabbles for the control he needs. But he can’t find it.

He slips.

Feels a sense of weightlessness—

**And Gabriel breathes in his first breath of air since he died in Zurich five years ago. He stares at the face of his baby sister. A deep unsettling sense of Déjà vu crashing over him, reality invading the shadow of a memory he had thought was long since forgotten. He looks up at his mother and lightning strikes his heart. Every beat faster and faster and faster as he takes in every inch of her face with wide eyes. She is so young.**

**She doesn’t get much older.**

**She frowns and reaches towards him.**

**Takes his sister in her arms—**

Reaper slams back into his body. He conquers every inch of it, takes it back. It is _mine_ , he snarls. But there is nothing there. It is empty except for himself.

Just…empty.

And there’s no pain. No pain. He has to remind himself of that.

Reaper realises he isn’t holding the child anymore and the woman is looking at him, asking if he is ok.

He shakes his head slowly, blinking as he looks down at his hands. They are small. Tiny. He marvels at the smooth skin. Unbroken.

He rubs his fingers together, _feeling_. The soft pads of his fingertips, unblemished by the scars of war and a hard, physical life. Untarnished by death.

He breathes in and swallows. He can smell. The air is dry with heat and dust, and under it is the delicate scent of spices, and a mustiness that somehow feels ingrained into the house. Under that is…he doesn’t know. He hasn’t ever been able to smell like this before.

He wonders if he can taste. His tongue darts out and around his lips, a sharp tang remains on it when he swallows. _Taste, so that’s what that means_. He has no idea what he tastes.

Reaper takes a step and looks around the room. The red afternoon sun, filtered through a haze of smog shines through the open windows, divides the room with rays of solid light. A living room. Small. It has a TV on one wall, the only new-looking thing in the room. The rest of the décor looks as though it was left over from the last century. The couch is a faded green that has definitely seen better days and the lamp on the cheap side table must be over eighty years old.

Reaper stares around at this strange time capsule, noting the religious symbols decorating the walls along with a thousand framed photos. The faces that stare out of their glass prisons look similar—like they had the same nose, or was it the way their cheekbones sloped sharply?

“Gabi?” The woman says the name softly, her deep voice putting so much feeling into the single word.

It takes Reaper a moment to realise she is talking to him.

“Gabriel Reyes is—

Reaper snaps his mouth shut, cutting off his own words. That is _not_ his voice. Whatever had just come out of his mouth was high-pitched. And whiny. Clear and young. It sounded like a child.

“Gabi, what’s wrong?” The Spanish is soft, brushes over him; contains a feeling Reaper never thought he would have directed at him. He shouldn’t know what it is. But somehow, his instincts tell him. A warmth. A beating heart. Another being _caring_. A selflessness.

He doesn’t put a name to it. _Can’t_ put a name to it.

Instead he turns from her and runs. It should take him three strides to get across the room. It takes eight.

The first door is open. The handle on par with his eyeline.

_What the hell is going on? Why is everything so big?_

Then the thought hits him like a punch to the gut.

_Why am I so small?_

Reaper ducks into a short hallway, at the end of which is a door, the afternoon sun attempting to break through an ancient stained glass window and getting shattered into a million different colors on the floor instead. Reaper runs towards it, grabs for the handle—massive in his hand—and twists.

Reaper has ripped doors off their frames before. This door takes _effort_ to pull open.

The world greets him. The sun just ducking behind the row of run-down suburban houses across a quiet, narrow road. A single tree grows in the front yard of this house. The fence slowly rots into the long grass of the unkempt yard and graffiti decorates its peeling white boards.

As he takes in this surreal scene, the colors begin to drain out of the world.

The sky—bright pink to blue to yellow to red—becomes white and grey. The world looks as though it is fading. The greys bleed into one another, slowly getting brighter and brighter. A light, bright. Too bright. Overwhelming.

He feels a gentle hand on his shoulder. A touch. It is warm and unassuming and it lets him know that everything will be ok. He doesn’t know how he knows, he just knows. Because that’s what that hand is.

And he falls into the white space again. 

**

The whine returns. A sharp, high-pitched single note. It cuts the space in two as Reaper falls.

He jolts to a stop, flinching violently as he _feels_ everything at once.

The colors come into focus almost immediately and sound follows two blinks afterwards. It takes him a moment longer for what he is seeing to register as a coherent thought.

Reaper looks down at a notebook. On one side of the page is messy handwriting. Repeated words, scribbled between the blue lines of the page. Whoever had written them had written ‘family’ in English, but all subsequent spellings were in Spanish, as if in defiance. Of what, he doesn’t know. It is a child’s writing. On the other side of the page is a similarly messy drawing of an owl. It has disparate eyes and is frowns out from the page at him. His hand holds the pencil poised just above the end of one of the lines for its wing.

Reaper flicks his eyes up to take in the room and flicks them right back down again.

_What the fuck is going on?_

He is in a classroom. He is sitting at a desk in a classroom. One of his hands is wrapped around a pencil, dwarfed by its size, the other is braced against a wooden deck, graffiti from years past etched into its faded wood. Beside him sits a young girl. He stares at her. She can’t be more than six or seven years old. She has freckles covering every inch of skin that he can see. Her dark hair is braided into two rows down her back.

She realises he is staring as she looks up to meets his gaze. Surprise widens her eyes for just a moment.

Then she gives him the most withering, _contemptuous_ look Reaper has ever experienced. “What?” she hisses at him.

Reaper glances away only to be met with more horror.

He stands up. His chair scrapes along the floor, screeching in the otherwise quiet classroom.

Thirty young faces immediately whip around to find the source of the noise.

His heart beats faster. He can’t focus. His eyes flick from face to face. He can’t stop. Can’t control it. He breathes faster and faster, almost choking as each breath rattles into his lungs. He can’t control it.

Can’t control himself.

He feels his claws begin to slip.

A shadow falls over him and he looks up at the towering figure of a woman. Different to the other one from wherever he was before. This one frowns down at him with something that might be concern. “Are you ok?”

He fights his own control as his lungs threaten to burst. So he does the only thing he can think of.

He runs.

Ducks around the surprised woman to weave in and out of the desks full of children who stare at him. Some frown, others laugh, but he doesn’t give them a second thought as he races out into a hallway. He breathes hard as he skids to a halt. Lockers fill every empty wall space and the floor is stained grey linoleum. Reaper locates the nearest exit sign and takes off towards it.

His lungs feel like they’re going to burst while at the same time his stomach heaves and roils. Pain lances through his head, almost as if his skull is splitting apart.

He doesn’t make it to the exit.

He trips over his own gangly legs, falling to the floor as the colors begin to drain out of the world once again. He manages to crawl over to the wall and tries to take stock of his situation. His chest hurts. His throat hurts. He’s in pain. But it’s not the pain he knows. It is not the pain _he_ feels.

Reaper sucks in a breath and he curls in on himself, clutches his arms around his legs, and tries to control what is happening to his body. But he can’t.

His breaths come in short, sharp gasps. Catch on his throat. He lifts a hand to his eyes when the world blurs and wipes away the strange wetness.

And he can’t control it. For the first time, Reaper _feels_.

And it _hurts._

But Reaper is familiar with pain. He claws at it. Invites it in, gets one leg under himself and uses it to make himself stand. He wades through his pain and the draining colors and this sense of chaos that has invaded his entire being with no way of taking it back.

He runs.

With each step, the colors bleed into each other more and more. Blacks, to greys, to white, until his foot finds no purchase on the linoleum floor and he tips forward and falls into the white abyss once again. The sharp whine comes back, splits his skull in two as he falls, his mouth open in a silent scream.

And there, cutting through the whine—a single note that makes him want to grind his teeth—he hears something else.

A faint tapping, a staccato rhythm. He tilts his head, listening hard for it as it slowly gets louder and louder. The reverb of the sound gives him the sense that he is listening to something tap against steel.

**

Reaper falls a moment longer, through this white space with the whining and the tapping until, just like before, it cuts off as he lands once again in a body that is not his. Sinking down, down, down, lungs straining as he reaches towards the surface.

He kicks upwards and takes a gasp of air into his burning lungs as the world invades all of his working senses at once. It is a lot to take in. And he feels one gangly leg—longer than they were last time, but still short—get tangled with the other, and he has a terrifying moment of clarity: he is still running. His lungs aren’t burning because he’s underwater, they’re burning because he needs to get away.

He _needs_ to run. Because something is chasing him.

Reaper puts his palms out before he hits the ground, rolling to break his fall, feeling the skin scrape off one of his knees. He hisses with pain as he leaps up off the rough concrete, his sneakers finding purchase and pushing off like a sprinter.

Flashes of light pass over him as he runs down a long and empty hallway, different from the last one. It gives off an eerie feeling, like it should be full of people. Fading red light streams through large windows to his right and Reaper spares a glance out of them to figure out where he is. 

At least three stories up. Late afternoon. The view is of an identical brick building across a desolate courtyard below with empty basketball courts and dirt in place of grass. School. He is in a school again.

_Shit._

The end of the hallway greets him just as he hears the sound of pursuit behind him. He swings around the corner and into another hallway, skidding to a halt when he is presented with a choice. Left, right, or into one of the numerous doorways that breaks up the monotony of the brown wall every few feet. His heart feels like it is going to rattle right out of his heaving chest and the muscles in his legs burn. Reaper gasps for air, cursing this body as he glances behind him to try and see what he’s running from.

Three boys, two larger than him and a skinny, gangly one, are sprinting towards him, yelling battle cries and insults. He has seen the look in their eyes before. Knows what they are after. He is being hunted.

They let out a shout, spotting Reaper as he turns back to the choice in front of him and wildly looks around for a way out.

**“Fifth door down. To the right.”**

The voice comes from all around him. It is quiet, deep in timbre and it speaks the words casually, but there is a poised restlessness behind them, like a predator showing the best way to get caught in its trap. At the same time the voice speaks, the tapping from the white space comes back, quietly rattling in his head.

It speaks to the urgency of the need to get away that Reaper doesn’t even question the voice. He takes off, sneakers skidding over the concrete floor, and counts the doors on the right. When he gets to the fifth he sees that it is a fire-escape. He is half as tall as it.

He punches the lock bar in as he hears his pursuers turn the corner into his hallway. He doesn’t spare them a glance this time, and instead leaps ahead and begins to climb a flight of stairs two at a time.

Reaper’s calves scream in protest, but he grits his teeth and pushes on. Up two, three, four flights of stairs, round and round until he comes to the final landing. Another fire door that says ‘Rooftop. Out-of-Bounds’ in bold red letters blocks his way. He doesn’t heed the warning and slams the door open as the tapping in his head gets louder and louder, blocking out any kind of coherent thought except—

Dead end.

He looks around frantically at the empty rooftop. A high chain-link fence traps him here, the afternoon sun glittering off the steel. Beyond that lies the city, shrouded in smog and filtered red light. It stretches out, expansive. Beyond the tall buildings lie the mountains, the sun setting the white dusting of snow atop them ablaze.

He hears three sets of footsteps behind him as he desperately tries to find a way out of this situation.

Trapped.

Fight or flight.

Reaper turns around to face the boys just as the roof exit bangs open and they come pouring out. He puts a hand out to his side, tries to scrape together his body, multiply it into—

_Oh, wait_. No nanobots.

One of the boys says something and the three of them advance on Reaper. He doesn’t hear it over the growl of frustration that leaks from his gritted teeth. Sweat drips down his face in the chill afternoon sun. He feels every desperate breath as it scrapes into his dry lungs. He can feel everything except that part of himself that gives him utter control over his body.

It is all unravelling before him.

And still there is no pain. He has to marvel at that, even as the three boys get closer and closer. He brings his fists up and settles back into a defensive stance.

**“Three against one? Don’t you think that’s just a bit unfair?”** The voice comes from beside him and Reaper whips his head around, expecting a punch to be thrown from a possible fourth assailant.

There is no one there. Empty space.

He hears the tapping in his head. A catchy rhythm, as if beat against a set of bars—

Reaper’s head snaps around the other way as a fist connects with his right cheekbone. He sees stars as his whole body goes limp. He falls and hits the concrete roof, gasping involuntarily— _everything in this body is involuntary_ , he reminds himself—as the breath is knocked from his lungs.

Reaper blinks and tries to pull himself together, scrape his limbs into some kind of working state. But nothing works. All he can do is clutch his face as the pain throbs out from it. _Too slow_ , he thinks as he manages to curl one hand beneath his chest, ready to push himself up but not quite managing it before the second blow comes. A foot connects with his stomach, pushing the breath out of his lungs way too fast so that when gasps he is sent into a coughing fit, even as more blows come raining down upon him.

It hurts. Reaper cries out at the pain that cuts into him each time a fist or foot connects. It’s not the deep pain of his body constantly dying and regenerating and dying again and putting itself together and tearing itself apart—

No. This is a different kind of pain. Not _his_ pain, but pain all the same.

And Reaper knows pain.

He lets it in. It floods him, takes everything he has. His mind goes white with it, his body numb. It is blissfully silent within the pain. No tapping. No high-pitched whine. No strange voice.

He can think again.

Reaper moves his arm up, and finds that he can. Then he smiles and wraps it around one of the boys’ ankles just in front of his eyes. He yanks, hard. The boy over-balances and Reaper throws himself into the movement, launching himself up.

He is fast. His body is light. Nimble. The boy huffs as Reaper’s shoulder drives into his stomach, Reaper twisting in a way to get the bone to sink in. He doesn’t spare the boy another thought as he goes down and instead reverses his position as he hears a shout to his left.

He ducks just in time. A fist sails over his head and Reaper grins as he steps around the boy—a full head taller than him—and drives an elbow into his ribs. The boy grunts and flails backwards a couple of steps and Reaper doesn’t stop moving, turning, dancing around all three as they try to land a punch but can’t avoid any of his own. And through it all he feels the pain, breathes it in every breath, uses it to fuel every movement he makes.

Finally, it’s over. He breathes hard, air puffing in and out of his burning lungs, chest filled with euphoria as he stands over the groaning bodies of the three boys. His hands start to shake and Reaper frowns as he feels the pain slipping from his grasp, slinking back to where it came from and opening the way for the _other_ pain.

He doesn’t feel so good. One of his shaking hands reaches up and swipes at a drop of sweat running down his face. The hand comes away coated in red. Reaper stares at it, blood glistening. The beginnings of rage light up in the pit of his stomach, the sharp whine, the eerie white noise, comes back. Makes it hard to think.

A shadow drops over him, blocking out the last rays of the setting sun.

**“Three against one. Told you it wasn’t fair.”** The strange voice is back. It comes from all around him, bleeding into his head. Or _out_ of his head. He isn’t sure.

Reaper turns around slowly and looks up. Inhales sharply as his heart leaps into his throat and he stares up into the amused face of Gabriel Reyes. Of _him_.

**“Also, did you just use thirty years of muscle memory and AI voodoo bullshit to beat three twelve-year-old boys in a fight?”** Reyes leans down until he is nose-to-nose with Reaper, the sun a burning orange halo at the back of his head.

The whine in his head gets louder and louder as the colors begin to drain from the world. Cutting through it all is the tapping. It doesn’t stop. Tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap-ta—

Reaper falls into the white again and as he does he finally hears the tapping from a distinct point.

Right beside him.

Reaper turns, and locks eyes with Gabriel Reyes as they both fall through the endless white.

Steel bars divide the space between them, disappearing above and below, stretching off into the distance on either side. An impossible cage in an impossible space.

Reyes looks out at Reaper from behind the bars. His face is young, perhaps thirty, not as scarred, hair not yet grey. One of his fingers taps the sharp rhythm against the bars. The sound drills into Reaper’s ears and he feels as though he is being split in two. All the while, Reyes falls and taps and stares at Reaper with a pair of unforgiving and uncompromising eyes.

Then he smiles.

***

Reaper does not fall for long this time. But he also doesn’t fall alone, and before he can say anything to the ghost behind the bars of the cage, Reaper finds himself slamming back into reality, back into the world again.

He is ready this time.

That’s what he tells himself as the colors and sound bleed back in and he can feel the body he inhabits.

Except he can’t feel anything. The colors aren’t right. The world is dim and it takes a few moment to realise he is in a tiny office room. The fluorescent light embedded in the cracked ceiling flickers every couple of seconds. The room is messy, full of paper files. An ancient computer screen—one of those old ‘flat’ screen monitors—hides half a tired face behind it. The woman looks to be about forty, dark-skinned. Her shirt is creased, as if she had left home in a hurry. She drags a hand across tired eyes, taps her keyboard a couple of times.

He still can’t feel anything.

His body is numb.

Reaper looks to his left and notices that he is holds the hand of a little girl. She can’t be more than seven or eight, her intense eyes don’t leave the face of the woman as she stares.

Reaper finds it hard to concentrate on any real detail. The numbness, the hole inside his body, this strange new sensation, is making it hard to organise his thoughts. They drift across this empty space in his head and he pokes and prods a couple of them— _the little girl has the same angular face as him, the ghost of a dead man isn’t here, the woman is looking at him expecting something, he is wearing large black boots and his nails are painted_ —but he has no desire to examine them. He just feels numb.

The woman sighs as the light flickers above her. “I’m sorry Gabriel. But it’s either this, or state care.” She sits back in her chair and observes him for a moment, meeting his eyes. Her mouth twists downward. “I’ll tell you now. You don’t want to go into state care. I know you’ve never met your grandparents, but I assure you, they are willing to take you two in, and that’s more than some families ever get.”

Reaper isn’t sure if her words are meant to make him feel better. He barely feels them impacting, the numbness like a wall around his mind. A void that swallows them up before he is able to figure out what they mean.

He looks down at the hand he is holding, squeezes it, wondering if he would feel it if he tried. The little girl looks at him. _Reyes’s sister_ , a thought drifts by, one part of his mind trying desperately to throw answers at him while another part doesn’t care in the slightest. She frowns as she looks up at him, then slowly she squeezes his hand back.

Reaper tilts his head to the side, wondering what it could possibly mean, even as the colors begin to drain from the world once again. The whining comes back, and with it the tapping, that catchy staccato rhythm that invades his head and drags him along in its wake

Reaper blinks and looks up at the woman behind the desk to find that Reyes stands behind her, tapping the rhythm against his leg.

But the ghost doesn’t spare him a glance. He only has eyes for the little girl, and in them, deep in the inky brown pools, is a sorrow so profound Reaper feels as if his own heart has been punched out of his chest.

And then he’s falling again.

**

Reyes falls with him. Through the white void, tapping that same rhythm that cuts through the deep whine in the air. Reyes has his eyes closed as he falls, but every line of his face is etched with sadness. He looks old. Far older than he had ever got in life. Older than the body that Reaper inherited after his death.

Reaper roars at him. It is wordless. Full of rage. Frustration. Who is this man, whose life he is being forced to live through?

Reyes opens an eye. It is milky white, unseeing, but it looks at him all the same. Just as the colors begin to bleed back into the world, just as he falls into the next memory-life-body of Gabriel Reyes, the flesh peels away from the ghost’s face and all that is left is a skull, smiling as the voids of its eye sockets stare at him.

**“You’re going to want to brace yourself.” T** he voice sounds like a bag of bones being shaken up, dry and dusty. **“I think the next one is not going to be all that pleasant for someone who’s never had to control their emotions before.”**

Reaper doesn’t even have time to ask what he is talking about as he slams back into the younger body of Reyes.

***

It is crippling.

Reaper folds over on himself as the void inside him opens up—it is anger and rage and hurt and darkness and it drags him down. He claws at the edges of it, desperately trying to find some kind of purchase as it threatens to swallow him whole. But it pulls harder, willing him to succumb to its dark embrace.

The pain of this void inside him is not the same as the pain he felt before. It is not _his_ pain, but gods it hurts, _it hurts_ , and Reaper knows—he doesn’t know how he knows, he just does—that if he embraces this pain there would be no coming back.

So he fights it. Holds onto the edges of this vast pit yawning wide and hangs on for dear life.

Slowly, he opens his eyes. It’s just as dark in the world as it is in his head. No, wait. He sees a faint line of light trying to force its way into the shadows of the room without any luck. He sits on a bed, his back against the wall. The covers are messy and tangled around his legs, trapping him in their confines. Reaper swallows and tries to take inventory of himself.

He is drenched in sweat, can feel it dripping down his back. There is a tiredness deep in his bones, a buzzing in his head, and all the while the void yawns deep inside him, threatening to pull him down.

Had he just woken from a dream?

Reaper doesn’t know. It feels like he’s been awake for days, that kind of feeling he gets when the nanites have frenzied into a storm and he has to use every inch of his control to wrangle them together again. He can’t be still when that happens, which just makes them harder to control.

This is something like that.

It is also nothing like that.

He finds it difficult to try and come to any worthwhile conclusions about this situation while he scrambles away from the darkness inside.

The tiny strip of light to his right becomes a rectangle, briefly widening into a portal out of the dark room, before it shuts again.

“Gabi?” a voice whispers. A child? Reaper can’t answer his own question, he just tries to stop himself from falling into the pit. His breath kicks up a notch with the effort it takes.

“Gabi?” the voice comes again. “Are you awake?” The softness pauses and Reaper suddenly wishes that it would keep going, keep talking. Distract him from the void.

He makes the effort to grunt.

There is a sharp intake of breath from in front of him. “Before. I heard something… are you ok?” The voice inches closer.

Reaper doesn’t feel ok. Nothing is ok about what is happening to him. The void yawns wider, sensing his weakness.

“Only… I can’t sleep,” the voice is closer to him. “Can I sleep with you? It’s too cold.”

The air is stifling. Reaper feels a bead of sweat drip down his face. He claws up from the void, unable to think about answering the quiet voice but clinging on to it all the same. He inches his way closer to it, takes a deep breath in anticipation of the inevitable fall.

The bed sinks down for a moment, jostling Reaper a little until he feels a small hand reach out, pat along his arm until she finds his hand and takes it into her own. She squeezes gently.

Reaper squeezes back.

He would like to know why.

He concentrates on that hand and slowly, slowly the void recedes, like the out-flowing tide. And Reaper breathes again.

The dark begins to lighten, black draining out of white and before Reaper has a chance to think on what has happened he is flung back out into the light and he is falling once more.

He lets himself relax an inch at a time as he falls, the void no longer pulling him down, time instead taking him into its chaotic grasp.

He looks over at Reyes falling next to him.

The skeleton is gone, replaced by a young face, beardless. He taps on the bars with black-painted fingernails. Teenage Reyes tilts his head and studies Reaper with deep, brown eyes much older than they have a right to be.

“ **Curious,”** is all he says before the colors come back again.

**

Reaper actually braces himself for the world this time, ready to claw his way back from the pit should it be there again.

Instead, he is overwhelmed by a burning, all-consuming rage.

_Finally._ Something familiar.

Reaper takes his first breath—The air is cold. Thin and dry—and uses it to strangle the hot rage. He doesn’t make it disappear, that would be counter-productive, he just holds it in place until it can be used. It settles into the pit of his stomach, like warm coals that can be stoked when they are needed.

Finally in control for the first time since that flash of blue light went off in the warehouse, Reaper feels like himself again.

He opens his eyes—

—and flinches back at the sight that greets him, nearly dislodging himself from the edge of the thirty-story high roof.

His arms flail wildly as his centre of gravity shifts forward, until he manages to shove himself backwards with a titanic force of will. There is a terrifying moment of weightlessness before his back hits the cold concrete of the building’s roof.

Reaper huffs his breath in and out of frozen lungs. He tries to tell his thundering heart where to shove it. He puts his hand over his chest, forcing it to slow down with the deep breaths he takes. That seems to help some. He closes his eyes for a moment. _Why is being alive so difficult?_

That’s when he hears it. The quiet tapping is back. This time against stone, almost drowned out by the wind gusting over the roof and the sound of cackling laughter.

Reaper opens his eyes again and is greeted by the face of a very young Gabriel Reyes leaning over him.

**“Ahh, you should have seen your face,”** Reyes howls, his youthful eyes scrunch up as he laughs.

Reaper feels his heart speed up. No. This is impossible. He shakes his head as he sits up and backpedals away from the ghost. An impossible ghost. Reyes looks to be about sixteen, longish curly black hair frames his face. He wears a black t-shirt with an unreadable slogan plastered over it. He wears two belts in order to hold up his ripped jeans, the one studded with spikes almost seems unnecessary, but Reyes makes it work. His jacket has a red lining and patches sewn on the sleeves and front.

**“Like looking in a mirror, ain’t it?”** Reyes strikes a pose for him. Then he reaches out and offers Reaper a hand.

Reaper makes a disgusted noise and ignores the hand, managing to get his shaking legs to work so that he can stand up. It isn’t even a real hand anyway, he tells himself. Disregarding the ghost, he looks out at the expanse of the city over the low balcony around the edge of the roof. The sun slowly sinks below the forest of buildings, orange light peeking through and reflecting on a million glass and steel windows. The wind buffets him forward slightly and Reaper swallows and takes a step back from the wall.

**“Quite a drop.”** Reyes is suddenly next to him, looking out at the city. Reaper doesn’t know which one, it doesn’t look like anywhere he’s ever been.

**“Los Angeles. Long before the omnium went rogue,”** the ghost answers his unspoken question.

Reaper narrows his eyes. “Who the fuck are you and why are you following me?” he growls out.

**“Well that’s rather obvious, don’t you think?”** young Reyes says in a patronising tone.

It really isn’t. Gabriel Reyes is dead. So why is he staring at Reaper while they both stand atop a building, looking out at a city that hasn’t yet been destroyed by a war that was fought thirty years before Reaper even came into existence?

“What are you doing here?” Reaper tries again.

**“What am _I_ doing here? No idea. What are _you_ doing here?”**

“I don’t know.” Reaper throws up his hands, notices that his fingernails are still painted black.

What the hell is happening? He’s barely had a moment to consider it.

**“Time travel.”** The teenage ghost says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“Excuse me?”

**“Time travel, you idiot. We’re falling through time. Flash of blue. You know, remember the Slipstream Project?”** The ghosts taps a finger on his chin. **“Oh wait. You wouldn’t remember that, would you? Because you’re not me.”**

Time travel? He is actually falling through time? Slipstream... Of course he wouldn’t remember it. He had never had Reyes’s memories to begin with. The body had just been an empty shell of damaged nanites until he had taken control.

**“Are you sure about that?”**

Reaper looks at the strange ghost for a long while. The ghost stares back at him. Reyes _looks_ solid. Reaper takes a step towards him and swipes a hand straight through his head.

_Ok. So, not real._

“ **Wow. Rude.”** Teenage Reyes crosses his arms and looks down his nose at Reaper. **“I thought it might be a good idea for you to have a look in a mirror. Finally see just how beautiful this youthful face really is. Much prettier than when it’s been dead for five years. You don’t moisturise by the way, and that’s gross. Those poor nanites flake off everywhere.”**

“What? What are you talking about?” Does he really look like that right now? Reaper glances down at the compelling evidence of identical tight pants and jacket that he wears. _Urgh_. He almost prefers the flakey nanites. At least they didn’t come with strange ghosts.

**“You know, for someone who was built with Artificial Intelligence processors, you are incredibly slow.”**

Reaper feels the rage in his stomach boil up. If he is meant to understand something here, he’s not sure what it could be. “Who. Are. You.” He grits out.

The ghost rolls his eyes. **“I am Gabriel Reyes.”** He spells it out with expansive hand gestures, as if Reaper is a simpleton. **“And you are an AI who is currently occupying my stolen body.”**

“Gabriel Reyes is dead.”

**“Oh am I? I hadn’t noticed all these years. Wow. Such a surprise to me. Dead. Guess all those times you told people I was dead have finally come to pass. I’ll just be going now.”** Teenage Reyes points off the roof. **“Hell has been waiting far too long for my beautiful face to show up. The only thing I needed was for someone to remind me that I’m actually dead.”**

Reaper stares at Reyes.

Reyes stares back.

“Fuck off,” says Reaper and goes to lean against the low balcony ledge. It’s a long way down.

The ghost’s face is an inch away from his own. **“How about no.”**

Reaper turns away again.

But the ghost is right back in front of him. Refusing to leave. Reaper snaps. The rage boils over and he takes a swipe at Reyes, overbalancing a step because of his strange gangly limbs. “Get out of my head!”

The ghost just stands there. **“Why don’t you get out of mine?”**

“Because you’re dead.”

**“No I’m not.”** Reyes points at him. **“See? Totally alive.”**

“If you’re alive, then why aren’t you in your head.”

**“Because you’re in there. And you take up an awful lot of room.”**

“Then take it back.”

**“Not sure I want to at this point. You probably got AI cooties all over my mind. All ‘follow orders unquestioningly’ this, and ‘kill people for Talon’ that. I’m good.”**

Reaper tries to understand what the ghost is saying, but he honestly has no idea. “Coward,” he says instead. If Reyes wants a fight for his head, Reaper will happily give him one.

At that, Reyes snorts. **“Ah you got me. I’m too scared to fight the big bad AI.”**

“If you’re not scared, then fight me. All talk, no bite.” _Pathetic_ , Reaper thinks.

Reyes raises his eyebrows. **“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Besides, in case you want to return to the urgent matter at hand. We’re falling through time.”**

“So?”

**“So… I’ve already had the grand tour. What’s the point in doing it all again? You know, hashtag yolo and all that.”**

“And you’re ok with me living it? Going to roll over and let it happen?” The ghost seems to change his tune an awful lot. One second he wants Reaper out of his head, the next he wants Reaper to live out the rest of his life for as long as he is stuck in this time travel nonsense. Whatever he did want, Reaper has no intention of ever giving it to him.

**“If I wasn’t, I doubt we would be having this conversation.”**

Reaper tries and fails not to let his confusion show on his face.

The ghost grins. **“Buddy, I can’t wait for you to see what’s in store. There’s some real treats coming right up.”**

“Like what?” Reaper knew some vague details from Reyes’s life, but he hadn’t bothered to find out much more than the surface information. Talon had wanted Reyes’s memories when Reaper had woken up, but he had disappointed them. There had been nothing to give.

**“Because they’re not yours to give,”** the ghost mutters. He ploughs on before Reaper has a chance to butt in. “ **I’m not telling you that by the way. Those are some major spoilers and it’s going to be more fun for me if we do this blind.”**

“But not fun for me.” A feeling brushes the back of his neck, making his hairs stand on end. The feeling tells him that he probably should have thought more about the body he was using. And just what kind of life he had lived.

...or not lived.

Reaper looks over the edge of the building again.

If he really is time travelling, what would stop him from jumping?

**“Nothing.”**

He could wipe the future clean. Stop it all from happen—

Reaper blinks and turns back to Reyes. “What?”

Reyes peers over the side of the building and looks skeptically at the ground below. His eyebrows pull together, as he flicks his eyes between Reaper and the drop. **“I mean, go for it. I always wondered what would have happened if I had actually been stupid enough to jump. Well, besides an unfortunate splat on the pavement.”**

Reaper looks at him incredulously. “I won’t exist,” he says slowly.

**“No. I won’t. And we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Funny how time works ain’t it? I haven’t quite figured it out yet. But by all means,”** Reyes gestures over the side of the building, **“go for it. Your funeral.”**

Reaper looks at the drop. Perhaps it would be easier if he had never existed. But then again, he might still exist in the future, just in a different capacity. If Reyes isn’t around, would he be an AI inhabiting something else or would he simply be gone before he ever has a chance to exist?

Reaper flicks his eyes to the ghost and meets Reyes’s look. The kid raises his eyebrows, **“no pain in the future if you jump now. Maybe.”**

“If I jump now, then I will not have lived that future,” Reaper spits out. His head hurts as he tries to figure all this out.

**“And isn’t that a pretty paradox.”** Reyes grins. **“I’ve never been a gambler myself, but you are more than welcome to flip that coin.”**

_Is it worth it,_ Reaper asks himself. Could he really jump now and avoid a future in which he felt nothing but pain? Could he avoid a future at all?

Does he want to?

Reaper chews on that question for a long time. Leans on the ledge of the building and watches the sun set through the smog-ridden skyscrapers. When it finally disappears, he and the ghost are left alone on the dark roof and he still does not have an answer.

Perhaps it would be better to simply wait this out. Gain more information. That would allow him to make an informed decision.

_Coward_ , the accusation drifts across his thoughts before he can stop it. He grimaces and stokes the coals in his stomach to try and burn it away.

Reaper backs away from the ledge.

**“Good choice,”** Reyes says quietly.

“It wasn’t a choice. There is nothing about this situation that would give me a choice.”

**“Oh, you’re wrong there, AI. Everything is a choice. And everyone has a choice.”**

Reaper considers that, turns it over in his mind.

He finds it not to his liking.

**“If you don’t believe me, then jump. But, between you and me,”** Reyes’s voice turns conspiratorial as he leans forward. **“There’s some pretty great shit coming up that you’re gonna want to hold yourself together for.”**

The teenager grins at him, face barely an inch away from his own. **“But ya’know, if you can’t hack it, then I’ll meet you in the afterlife, you body-snatching motherfucker.”** And with that Reyes launches himself up one, two steps to the ledge, turns around as he tips over it and gives Reaper a double middle-finger salute disappearing from sight.

Reaper dashes over to the ledge and catches a last glimpse of Reyes falling—down and down, laughing all the way.

He gets this feeling. An uneasiness in the core of his being he hasn’t felt before. He thinks that perhaps it is a little bit terrifying to have the ghost of a madman living in his mind as he falls through time.

He’s never felt scared before...

And just like that, Reaper pitches forward as the colors drain from the world and the sharp whine comes back.

He falls through the white space again and Reyes taps on his cage, wearing a ridiculous smug look the entire time.

***

Reaper falls—

*

He’s backed up against the wall of the empty classroom. Another boy has his arm braced next to Gabriel’s head, he looks intently into Gabriel’s eyes as he moves his lips closer and closer, lessening the space between them.  
Gabriel doesn’t try to stop him.  
His heart beats so fast he thinks it must be about to burst out of his chest.  
And then their lips meet.  
The first time is chaste, over before it begins. But Gabriel craves more. He leans in, is the one to close the gap this time, brushes his lips against the other boy’s. Deepens it when he feels him responding—

*

Before Reaper can even attempt to take control, the world is ripped away again—

 

*

It’s dark. Hot. Sweat drips down his back. Hands follow the trail as he moves in tandem with another body.  
The other breathes into his neck. Moans softly as they rut against each other.  
Something builds inside him. Something good, feels good.  
He finds the other’s lips and kisses him, deep and long and full of fury.

*

Reaper struggles to break free, to move his limbs, to take the moment as his own. To control—

*

Gabriel runs. Runs to get away from the burning in his chest.  
The fury that has followed him for the last couple of years, won’t let him out of its grasp.  
When he can’t run any more he stops. Collapses on the grass outside the streetlights of the overgrown park. Lies in the dark.  
His chest heaves and he goes to wipe the sweat from his face.  
He winces when he accidentally brushes against his bruised cheek. He had forgot about the fight he’d been in a couple of days ago. The fight he hadn’t started, but sure as hell had finished and had got him suspended for his trouble.  
He had refused to sit caged in that house though. Couldn’t bare the thought of being there alone.  
So he had run.

*

Reaper tries to force his way into Reyes’s memory. His time. His body. Instead, he is dragged away once more.

*

The old man plays guitar. Fingers dancing across the strings effortlessly as he closes his eyes and sings a soft melody.  
Gabriel watches from the chair opposite. Tries to remember the positions of fingers on the strings, hearing where the song is going and where it had been.  
The song comes to an end—

Reaper blinks, or he would if he had a body to control. He’s heard that song before. He _knows_ it—

—your turn,” says Abuelito and he holds out the guitar to Gabriel with an encouraging smile.  
He takes the guitar. Breathes in deep, recalling where his fingers should go, how to play the melody and rhythms of the song.  
Gabriel sets his fingers on the strings and plays. But it doesn’t sound right.  
He frowns. Stops. Feels the anger well up. Frustration makes him grind his teeth.  
The old man sighs. “Ah, niño, you think too much.” He leans forward and taps Gabriel on the forehead. “You don’t play with your head, play with your heart. It is where music comes from.”  
“That’s not helpful.” Gabriel tries to give the guitar back but the old man stops him.  
“Uh uh uh. Try it my way. Close your eyes. Don’t think. _Feel_ the music and let it flow.”  
Gabriel thinks this is stupid, but he humours the old man. Closes his eyes and sets his fingers on the strings. He doesn’t let himself think about where they should go, he simply listens for where they should be.  
The song is beautiful **.**

*******

Reaper has heard it before. He tries to remember it even as it is torn away from him.

Time throws him forward again. But Reaper _knows_ that song. His nanites had buzzed with its rhythm for five years. Any time they were particularly painful, or restless, or about to storm, Reaper had heard that song and had been able to calm the storm.

At the time, he had thought he was mad. Just another malfunction to add to the long list of problems that had come with the body he had inherited.

Now, he’s not so sure.

Time doesn’t give him a chance to dwell on it.

***

He sits at the kitchen table with his sister and does his homework while she works on hers. Behind them both are the sounds of their Abuelita bustling in the kitchen and frying up a storm for dinner.  
His maths homework is covered in tiny drawings, the doodles breaking free from the margins while his mind is elsewhere.  
He taps his pencil on his chin.  
“Do you need help with yours?” Mia asks, breaking him out of his reverie.  
Gabriel blinks and looks down at where Mia peers at his book, a tiny crease in her forehead as she frowns at his maths homework. Her eyes are alight with concentration and a smile tugs up her mouth as she points at one of the earlier questions he’s already completed.  
“You got this one wrong,” she says.  
Gabriel leans his head on his hand and raises his eyebrows. She is five years younger than him, not even a freshman yet, but she’s always been good at maths. “Oh? Show me how to do it then?” he challenges.  
She does. He had got it spectacularly wrong.  
When Mia finishes thoroughly schooling him on how to do complicated functions, she grins at him. “You owe me for this, Gabi.”  
He can’t keep the grin from spreading across his face. “What could _I,_ your big boring older brother who is terrible at maths, possibly owe you?”  
Mia thinks about it for a second before crossing her arms. “I’ll collect at a later date.”  
“Right…” little she-devil. Gabriel leans his head down onto the table. “Hey Mia, have you thought about what you want to do after school?”  
“I want to build things for people.”  
The way she says it leaves nothing up to chance. Mia _will_ build things for people and she’ll find a way regardless of the lot she has been tossed early in life.  
“What kind of things?” asks Gabriel.  
“Like buildings and hospitals and bridges and homes. Things that make it better for people.”  
“It?”  
“The world,” she says matter-of-factly.  
Gabriel chews on his cheek, thinking it over. He’s been thinking about her a lot lately. Mia could probably get a scholarship, but why should he leave her future up to chance? If Mia is ready to take on the world, well, he is going to make the world ready for her.  
At least now he doesn’t have to constantly avoid the questions about what he would do in his future.  
Mia is the future.

*

“Contact!” Harmen yells.  
They scramble. Gabriel feels his heart kick up into a panic, his brain start screaming _run run run_ , and his body do what it is trained to do as the dusty desert air is split by heavy gunfire.  
He dives behind the vehicles—the only cover in this godforsaken hellscape—and ends up next to Pottsy. The other soldier’s eyes are wide as he gasps for air. Bullets ping off the heavy armour of the Humvee behind them.  
Gabriel checks his rifle, flips the safety off and measures the angle the bullets are spraying in from.  
He shuts his eyes and thinks of Mia for only a moment, it’s all he can spare before he _moves_ —

*

He feels the world come apart beneath him. Smoke and ash swirl around and he burns for what he’s done. For the people he couldn’t save. Feels the darkness closing in on him, looks at his hands and feels the shape of his rifle within them. He can’t hold it and it slips through his fingers like sand, leaves behind a red slick that drips. Drips. Drips—  
Gabriel jolts awake. Sits up lightning quick and strikes out wildly only to smack his hand on the wall with a loud thwack!  
The pain helps him focus.  
He hisses out sharp breaths through his teeth, trying to stop his lungs from constricting any further.  
He scrubs his hands. Wrings them together until he knows that the slick feeling is gone.  
Just a dream, he tells himself.  
Only a dream.

*

He wears urban combat gear, light armored to make it easier for them to move. Black. His high-powered rifle is slung over his shoulder, pistol strapped to his leg.  
It’s night.  
The four of them stand on the rooftop of a building that looks out over the troubled city. Lights twinkle from a million windows of the glass and steel offices and apartment complexes in the west.  
Fires burn in the east. Every so often they hear a smattering of gunfire and a soft boom. They are too far away to hear the screams.  
Doesn’t stop Gabriel from imagining them.  
“Reyes and I are on point,” Ramos says in her rough, low voice. “Hill and Turner will cover, then follow through on my signal. Wu is gonna watch our asses from the south window, Kirav from the east. Now, Saber and his gang gave up the rights to their birth certificates the moment we got called in, but we want minimum hostage casualties. We won’t save them all, but we’ll fucking try.”  
Gabriel likes Ramos. She doesn’t bullshit anything. Just tells it straight and lets them make up their own minds about how they feel.  
She makes her way over to the edge of the building and surveys the drop, waiting for Wu and Kirav’s ok to go in. Gabriel follows her quietly.  
“Out with it Reyes,” she mutters without looking up.  
He’s silent for a moment. _How does she know?_ Fucking mind reader. “Why did you make me your second?” He is the youngest member in the squad by a good four years. Barely has any combat experience next to the rest of them. Ramos has fifteen years on him and yet, she had him in her squad for less than a week before he found himself as her second.  
She turns to face him, leans against the low balcony that runs around the edge of the building.  
“You got my back, Reyes?”  
Gabriel frowns. “Yes.”  
She spreads her arms, “well there’s your answer.”  
Gabriel just looks at her. Waits for her to explain.  
“Listen, Reyes. I’ve asked that to a lot of people in my career, and I know which ones lie, which ones think they tell the truth, and which ones know that the question is so pointlessly redundant that they answer it with the truth without thinking anyway.”  
“I fail to see how this tells you anything about me and my ability.”  
Ramos rolls her eyes, “I don’t need reassurances of your _ability_ , Reyes, I need conviction. You’ve got it, kid. You’ll go far.”  
She tilts her head to the side, listens to the chatter in her ear for a second.  
“Time to go,” she says and pushes off from the wall, puts a hand on his shoulder for the barest of moments as she brushes past.

*

Reaper screams in silent frustration as he is forced to watch—

*

Gabriel has been sitting on this beach for the last five hours drinking an entire week’s pay away on expensive fancy-ass cocktails.  
He figures he’s earned it.  
Ramos had texted him earlier and asked where he was at. He had struggled a bit with the reply, but eventually sent her something vaguely legible.  
She must have been able to decipher it because here she is now, sprawling into one of the empty beach chairs beside him.  
“S’up,” slurs Gabriel, trying to focus on her from behind his sunglasses.  
“Geez kid, you might want to slow down or you won’t even make it to your own party tonight.”  
Gabriel waves away her concerns. “I’ve been promomo… pro… pro-mo-ted,” Gabriel pauses and gives himself a mental slap on the back for getting through the word, “-before. Don’t see why I have to go to a party this time.”  
Ramos gives him one of her looks. Then she sighs. “If you didn’t like parties, you just had to say so.” She eyes his cocktail, “you mind if the rest of R Squad and I join you on your quest for liver failure?”  
Gabriel toasts her with his half-finished mojito. “In loving memory of my evening party that has now turned into a beach party.”  
Ramos shakes her head and orders a drink. Several drinks. Seven tequila shots to be exact.  
Gabriel raises his eyebrows. “I’m not going to be the one with liver failure.”  
Ramos picks up one of the shots. “When you’ve been at this as long as I have, liver failure honestly becomes a far more attractive option than what I’ve probably got coming.” She holds it up to him, “to your long and glorious career, Reyes.”

*

His world is silent. A numb kind of silent. His heavy footsteps vibrate up through his body every time he takes a step. It is the only indication that he is moving at all.  
He can’t _feel_ anything. He doesn’t even know whether what he’s seeing is real.  
_Shock. You’re in shock_ , some detached part of his mind whispers into the void of numbness.  
He blinks as his path to the bodies is suddenly blocked by another.  
This one is alive. Half of the woman’s face is swollen and cut, skin broken after being hit too many times. She grips the front of his body armor, almost puts him off balance as she pulls him down so that he looks into her eyes.  
He knows that look.  
Fury.  
And hate.  
She screams at him. Words he can’t hear. Doesn’t need to hear to know what they are.  
_You did this._  
He feels a heaviness drag him down. Like someone has encased his feet in concrete and dropped him into the depths of the ocean. He feels her despair as he sinks into the murky depths, even as another soldier roughly drags her off him and out of the room.  
She is one of the hostages he managed to save.  
He finally arrives in front of the other bodies that litter the floor. Two of them are smaller than the rest, but just as still.  
These are the ones he couldn’t save.

*

The fire does nothing to take the bite out of the freezing tundra air. The wind wraps itself around Gabriel, ignores his supposedly high-tech you’ll-never-feel-cold-again winter combat gear, and delves deep inside his bones.  
He considers the offer.  
Weighs up what it would mean for him. What it would mean for the other people in his life. What it might mean for his future. The future of people that he can help.  
_And the future of those you can’t help._  
He squeezes his eyes shut as the heaviness comes back.  
He breathes deep. Fills his lungs with the icy wind hoping it would let him feel something before the numbness takes over.  
Thankfully, the feeling passes this time. He knows he is slowly getting better.  
Not easier. Not healed. But better at forgetting.

*

Gabriel looks up at the old house in LA. It’s been close to two years since he’s been back here. It hasn’t changed a bit.  
He’s not even sure if he should have come back here. Is scared that he won’t be able to leave again.  
The signed confidential papers burn a hole in the pocket of his jacket. He’s ready to hand them in and start something new. As he stares up at this old house though, he feels nervous.   
Raising his hand to knock on the faded red wood of the old home feels almost like a finality that he doesn’t want.  
But one he needs.  
He’s come to say goodbye. Has to see them before he goes.  
There is every chance he might not be coming back.


	3. The Soldier

_Diamond halos on our heads_  
_And combats on our feet_  
_Made without a silver spoon_  
_Not richer than the kings_  
_Roaming through the haunted grounds_  
_So we remain unseen_  
_Don't tell us who to be  
_ _Rebels off the leash_

          -Tkay Maidza. _Glorious_.

 

Reaper falls.

Reyes taps on his bars.

And Reaper finally snaps.

That rhythm. The tapping. The smug look the ghost of a dead man gives him.

_Time._

Everything. Reaper has had enough.

His hand snakes out lightning quick and he wraps his claws into Reyes’s shirt front and yanks the man forward and into the bars of the cage. Reyes’s head connects and makes a painful sounding clang. Reaper barely even registers the grim pleasure of it, because he has finally, _finally_ , stopped tapping.

He growls at Reyes as the ghost’s hands try to find purchase around his arm. He loosens his grip imperceptibly, then he wrenches Reyes forward again. The clang as his head hits the bars is music to Reaper’s ears. Some enjoyment in this hellish landscape he is being forced to endure.

He smiles.

But it promptly melts off his face when he realises that Reyes is laughing. The man only laughs harder when their eyes finally meet and he quickly divulges into a wheezing coughing fit as Reaper wraps his other arm through the bars and around Reyes’s neck and squeezes.

Reaper knows he shouldn’t engage. Knows he should just ignore this ghost inhabiting half his mind and projecting himself into Reaper’s own. Probably just a malfunction, he tells himself. Or a dream. But it was too much. He feels like he’s been chewed up and spat out, then dug up and gnawed on again by a dog hungry enough to try and eat a long-buried bone. There is no sign of it letting up.

He feels overwhelmed.

Exhausted.

And he’s only just lived through Reyes’s childhood. _What the hell is the rest of it going to be like?_

Reyes laughs and laughs and refuses to run out of breath even as Reaper squeezes so hard any normal human’s head would be mush.

So. He couldn’t kill a ghost.

Maybe he could reason with it.

Reaper loosens his grip just an inch, feeling Reyes stiffen his muscles in anticipation of the next blow. It doesn’t come though. “Where are we going next?” he hisses into Reyes’s ear.

Reyes relaxes and then shrugs. **“What makes you think I have any idea?”**

“Because you told me to brace myself _last_ time I fell into your shitty life.”

**“Only because I knew my life was shitty for a good six years after my mother died.”**

Reaper is silent for a moment. “So what,” he finally mutters in a deathly quiet voice, “you didn’t want me to get hurt?”

He can feel the disdain radiating off Reyes. **“I don’t give a shit about you. I just didn’t want you to do anything stupid.”**

“And what’s stopping me now?”

**“Well, I wager you want to actually have a chance to exist in the future, so that might be a pretty good reason to not completely fuck up my life.”**

Reaper clenches his jaw. Is that what he wants? Why should he care?

He feels as though he hovers on the ledge of that building again. And again, he steps backwards. Doesn’t quite feel like examining the answers to those questions. _Coward_.

“What. Happens. Next?” he repeats through gritted teeth.

Reyes relaxes his grip on Reaper’s arm and Reaper thinks that finally the ghost might see some sense and they could get through this together. Because as much as Reaper hates him, Reyes would be useful. His own muscles relax in response and he opens his mouth to repeat his question—

Reyes moves. Reverses the grip on his neck, grabs a hold of Reaper’s arm, twisting as he pulls forward. Reaper’s head hits the metal bars with a clang that would have been painful had they been anywhere else but a timeless plain of existence. Reaper finds his face— _his_ face, old and scarred and missing half the jaw—squished up against the cool iron bars, Reyes’s eyes an inch away from his own.

He’s too shocked to struggle.

**“What happens next, is you toughen up and become a soldier.”** Reyes grins at Reaper as he tries to jerk back from the bars, but finds himself unable to move in Reyes’s iron grip. His stomach starts to sink as he glimpses the sparks of madness in Reyes’s eyes. **“Time to save the world.”**

The ghost lets Reaper go just as the colors finally start to bleed back in.

He slams back into reality. Back into time.

***

His arm presses against a windpipe. He is breathing hard, sweat pouring down his face. His muscles quiver with the effort it takes to hold the body down on the mat. _Wrestling mat?_

Reaper glances at the face of the person he is holding in submission, but who has yet to tap out.

He nearly lets go in surprise.

Blue. Blue eyes. A smattering of freckles are dusted across the nose. Face red and sweaty. Young. Blonde hair. Muscles yet to fill out.

Jack Morrison.

Reaper would know that face anywhere. Has seen it in the news files, in tributes to Overwatch, to his dead legacy. He’s seen it everywhere, and now he’s cutting off the oxygen to it.

Reaper smiles.

**“Ooooh,”** the voice of Reyes comes from beside him and out of the corner of his eye Reaper sees the ghost squatting down and looking between him and Jack. He taps the rhythm out on the wrestling mat. **“You finally get to meet Jack. Reaper this is Jack. Jack, meet the AI that stole my dead body and now tries to kill everything he touches. We’re falling through time at the moment—**

“Shut up,” growls Reaper.

“I haven’t said anything,” Morrison wheezes from underneath him.

_Fuck._ At least that answers the question as to whether anyone else can hear the ghost.

A vague thought crosses Reaper’s mind. What if he killed Morrison now? Reyes would be court martialled, thrown into jail to rot. Overwatch wouldn’t exist—at least not in the way it had with him leading it. Would the omnics win? Would _he_ exist? Reaper doesn’t—

Morrison snaps his palm up and into Reaper’s nose while he isn’t paying attention. He sees a brief flash of white before the pain blooms, his grip loosening in surprise for just an instant. It’s all Morrison needs and suddenly Reaper finds his position reversed.

Reyes howls with laughter beside him. **“There’s something so satisfying about watching yourself get punched in the face”**

Reaper tunes him out. Concentrates on the arm pinning him down and the weight atop his chest.

“Oh shit,” he hears from above him. “My bad, Reyes.” The voice is strained with the effort it is taking to hold Reaper’s body down.

Reaper has no idea what he’s talking about. He thinks about this for a moment and then relaxes his body completely, letting go of his muscles, the tension, everything.

Strange that he can do that.

Morrison thinks it’s strange too because he relaxes in response, perhaps thinking Reaper has given up—

He moves. Leg back, he kicks up using his thighs to take the brunt of the weight until he is able to kick Morrison’s leg out from underneath him. He hears a huff of breath and then he’s twisting Morrison’s arm behind his back and forcing him down into the mat with nowhere else to go.

He waits while Morrison grunts underneath him, trying to find purchase to flip him back around.

Reaper doesn’t give him an opening.

Morrison taps the mat.

Reaper thinks about breaking Morrison’s arm. It is little more than he deserves. But in a moment of weakness he lets go, springing up and as far away from Morrison as the mat will let him go. He tries hard—but not too hard—not to let his revulsion show on his face.

He looks around. Men and women in training sweatpants and shirts have gathered around the mat, most of them are cheering and a couple come pat him on the back. He shrugs off their touch and wipes an arm across his nose and mouth, trying to swipe away the sweat.

His arm comes away with a red smear.

**“Damn, he got me good.”** Reyes squints in front of his face, examining Reaper’s nose with a frown.

Reaper looks away from the ghost, and straight into Morrison’s regretful blue eyes.

He grits his teeth and barely contains a growl as his nostrils flare.

_Ah. Mistake_. That _hurts_. Why did this body just _do_ things?

Why does he have no control?

Was there nowhere he could be at peace? Why couldn’t time dump him in a moment when Reyes was asleep? But _oooh no_ , it just has to be crippling depression there, and Jack _fucking_ Morrison here.

**“Geez, you need to lighten up. It looks like you’re trying to murder him with ESP or some shit,”** Reyes looks between the two of them like he’s watching a tennis match.

Reaper huffs out a breath and quickly realises his nose is still bleeding.

Stupid. Human. Problems.

He turns from both his ghosts and begins to stalk towards a sign for the locker rooms. He skirts around the other wrestling mats, the recruits on them being watched over by officers and plainclothed civilians scribbling on tablets. A couple of the watching recruits glance at him, but they quickly turn away when they see his face.

Reaper pushes his way into the locker room and stops. It’s a big locker room. A lot of soldiers apparently.

**“Oh man. I don’t even know whether I remember where my locker is.”** Reyes taps his rhythm against a red-painted locker, identical to about two hundred others lining the walls.

Reaper prowls along the lockers, looking at the last names, hoping he won’t be here for much longer. He finds himself wishing the colors would start bleeding again, just so he could get out of this shitty point in time and not think about how he could have just _murdered_ Jack Morrison. Could have wrapped his arms around his pretty neck. Squeezed—

But no. He had let him go.

_After_ being punched in the face.

A second source of tapping has joined Reyes’s ceaseless noise. Reaper glances towards the sound and realises his own hand has started drumming the rhythm onto the lockers. He curls his fingers into a fist and slams it into the locker.

The tapping pauses.

“Where is a sink?” Reaper asks the ghost through gritted teeth.

**“At the back.”** Reyes’s hand is poised above the lockers, but he nods towards the back of the room. **“You know,”** he says as he begins the tapping again, following Reaper down the long rows of lockers, **“you have a shot to change fate. To change _time._ You could, like, not be an asshole for these first couple of weeks of SEP.”**

Reaper finds a row of sinks and turns on a tap before looking up and into the mirror.

He has a _face_.

He blinks.

His face blinks back.

It captivates him. Shaved head, smooth skin, not yet pockmarked by too many years of combat and war. He has one of the old scars already—or new scars, it looks to be recent. He wonders how he got it. He’s also young. Really young. And kind of scrawny.

Pre-enhancements then.

His nose is a little swollen but he doesn’t think it’s broken. If he’d had nanites he could have just remade it, but then he’d also be in more pain than he was now. Blood has dripped down to his chin—no beard yet, and it makes him look even younger. Reaper does the maths, he must be in his mid-twenties.

**“Quite the looker, aren’t I?”** Reyes wiggles his eyebrows over Reaper’s shoulder. He wears the same face as Reaper. **“You’re welcome by the way—**

Reaper splashes water over his face, trying to drown out Reyes’s incessant talking. He manages to wipe most of the blood off, wincing a little when he accidentally brushes against his nose.

He wonders when the colors will start to bleed out again. It’s taking longer than usual. The rhythm of the fall seems interrupted.

But there’s always that other rhythm. The one his ghost is tapping unceasingly—

“Reyes!” The voice huffs from behind him.

Reaper lifts his eyes back up to the mirror, carefully ignoring the ghost behind his left shoulder and turning his attention to—

Jack _Fucking_ Morrison.

His eyes narrow.

“Hey man,” Morrison looks anxious. He bites his lip before he continues, “I just wanted to apologise for hitting you on the mat. Didn’t realise my hand was—

“Fuck. Off.” Reaper makes sure to put as much of the anger boiling in his stomach into those two words as he can. He’s not quite sure if it’s his own anger either, and that just makes him madder.

Reyes snorts from behind him.

Morrison’s mouth opens.

Shuts.

His head tilts ever so slightly to the side as his eyes flick down.

The tapping continues. Against porcelain. The running water in the sink drowns it out a little.

Reaper curls his hands into fists on either side of the sink.

The tapping stops.

Reaper shuts his eyes.

When he opens them, Morrison and the ghost behind him are both gone. He is alone.

The colors bleed.

***

—you will be assigned a partner. You will be responsible for your partner. If anything happens to your partner, notify medical staff immediately.”

The officer paces up and down the lines of recruits. There are about fifty of them. They all stand at attention.

Reyes slouches next to Reaper with his arms crossed. He looks at the officer with something akin to distaste.

Out of the corner of his eye Reaper sees a flash of blonde, three soldiers down. He fights the urge to roll his eyes. Reyes’s memories would be pretty useful right about now, but he didn’t seem inclined to share them with Reaper, and he had yet to think of a way to force him to share.

Reyes seems fickle, and more than a little unhinged. That might be a side effect of an AI taking over his body, but that didn’t really make any sense. By all accounts Reyes should be dead.

Obviously that wasn’t the case. So Reaper would just have to deal with his ghost.

The officer is checking off pairs on her clipboard. “Morrison and Reyes. O’Harrel and Diaz. Lee and—

Reaper closes his eyes briefly. Fucking typical. When he opens them, Reyes smirks at him.

**“You may as well make friends with Jack. You get stuck with him for the next twenty fucking years or so.”**

Reaper fights the urge to reply with sarcasm. Oh yes. Make friends with Morrison. The man Reaper is tasked with hunting down at the end of all this. Who eventually leads Overwatch to its doom. The man who stole what was rightfully Reyes’s. Reaper had read the newsreels, tried to piece together the life of a man who had effectively become a ghost while still living. A man who had saved the world and then been written out of the history books. That grates a little on him too. Why is Reyes acting so casual in all this? Almost as though he didn’t hate Jack for everything that happens.

**“I don’t hate him, if that’s what you’re thinking,”** Reyes shrugs. And then grins a little as Reaper’s jaw clenches. **“Yeah, I know. I should, right? Cause that’s what all the news reels said. Resentment brewed for years. Made us blind to what Overwatch had become. I’m not going to say he wasn’t an idiot towards the end, because he was. So caught up in himself and what he thought Overwatch still was that he was blind to what it had become.”** Reyes sighs. **“But so was I. I knew about Talon infiltrations and I didn’t show him what was under his nose until it was too late… Too proud and bitter. Blackwatch was compromised. Zurich happened. Then _you._ ”**

_Should have just stayed dead._ The thought flits across Reaper’s mind and he fights the urge to frown. He had been inserted into Reyes’s broken body in an effort to control the nanites that had swarmed out of control. Reyes was dead. And he was in control.

_Is in_ control.

“Hey partner,” a blonde head phases in through Reyes’s ghostly form.

His hands twitch and Reaper fights the urge to punch it.

_Control._

Instead, Reaper turns and begins to walk away, hopefully towards his room. Some kind of room. Anywhere that didn’t have Jack Morrison in the vicinity.

“Uh,” the voice behind him keeps pace.

Reaper glances behind him at Morrison’s apologetic face. He points in the other direction. “The rooms are that way.”

Reaper takes one more step—feels a little bit of himself die inside as Reyes barks out a laugh beside him—and turns on one heel to stalk off in the opposite direction, Morrison still following behind him like a lost puppy.

His hand taps out a familiar rhythm on his thigh. And this time he doesn’t stop it as the colors begin to drain from the world again.

**

Reaper vomits. He leans over a toilet and heaves again, unable to control the roiling mass that is his stomach. He could compare it to the nanites when they swarmed, but they eventually submitted to his will. He isn’t having much luck controlling anything, he thinks, as he heaves another mouthful of unpleasantness out of his body.

His skin feels as if it’s on fire and his bones are ice cold. Every few minutes his body decides to switch from intense shivers that wrack his frame to dripping sweat. The vomit smells disgusting and his left arm hurts. Needle puncture scars dot the vein at his elbow.

**“Urgh, I really don’t miss this.”** Reyes sits on the floor beside him, leaning against the wall. The tiny bathroom seems far too cramped with two people in here. **“How are you doing, buddy? Let it all out, it helps in the long run.”**

Reaper manages a grunt before he leans over the toilet again and dry heaves, not thinking of very much at all other than how much he hates this body.

And yet, it is still so much better than having to constantly hold himself together. He would take this body over the old one any day even if it came with sarcastic ghosts that were adamant on haunting him throughout time.

Reaper flicks his eyes across to the ghost, but Reyes has his eyes closed, almost as though he is sleeping—

There’s a soft knock on the door. “Hey, are you alright?” Morrison’s voice is muffled.

In answer, Reaper heaves over the toilet again.

He’s like that for another few minutes. Then the nauseousness subsides a little and he just shivers on the floor of the tiny bathroom.

He’s exhausted. Reaper is. Not just this body, but him. He wants to sleep. Wants to lie down and sleep. He’s never slept before and he wants to sleep. Slowly the shivering begins to subside and he just deals with each wave as it comes.

The door to the bathroom slides open. Two hands heave him up into a sitting position. Reaper lets them. He can’t be bothered to fight back and he sags into the arms. One hand picks up something and puts an object in his hand.

A glass of water. _What is he supposed to do with that?_

“Drink,” Morrison says from behind him. Reaper looks in confusion at Reyes. The ghost gets it though, and motions what to do, tipping his hand up near his mouth.

_Oh. Right_. Reaper had seen humans do that. He tips the liquid up and into his mouth. The first sip catches on his throat and he almost chokes, but after that he realises how good this stuff is. The rest of the glass is chugged down.

He almost heaves it right back up again. Braces himself against it, muscles bunching up and tightening as he curls himself over and groans. He feels the hand on his back clench a little in anticipation, but then his stomach settles and he slowly relaxes each muscle as the fit subsides.

“Do you think you can make it back to the bed?” Morrison asks.

Bed. How far was the bed? Reaper doesn’t even feel like he can move. Besides, the bathroom floor was kind of comfortable.

**“Trust me, the bed is far more comfortable,”** Reyes says from beside him. He has a tiny smile on his face.

Trust him? Reaper doesn’t trust him. Reaper doesn’t even know if he’s real or some kind of malfunction in his systems. He would prefer it if Reyes was a malfunction—perhaps a split personality his faulty processors are using as a coping mechanism.

But he’s falling through time. He’s broken. His body is nothing like what he’s used to.

He doesn’t have a body.

He has a mind.

He exists.

He’s not sure he wants to.

But there is no denying he does.

He doesn’t know who he is. _What_ he is.

It all swirls around and around. Thoughts tumbling over one another as he spirals further down through the floor and into the dark—

“Come on.” Hands grasp under his arms and he feels himself being lifted from the white-tiled floor. One of his arms is placed around a neck. Blonde hair. Pretty. His eyes don’t leave Morrison’s neck.

Reaper manages to get his leg muscles to take some of the weight as Morrison half-drags him through the bathroom door and into a small living space. There are two separate single beds on either side of the room. Morrison directs him towards the one with twisted blankets hanging over the side and spilling onto the floor.

He falls out of Morrison’s arms and onto the bed. “You were right,” he mumbles into the soft pillow. “The bed _is_ more comfortable.”

Reyes snorts. **“Course I’m right. Sleep well, you’ll need it.”**

Darkness encroaches on his eyes as they droop closed. His body shivers a final time as Morrison gently drapes the blankets over him. He hears covers from the other side of the room being pulled back and then the sound of a body impacting another bed.

“Thanks,” the word slips out of his mouth before he can stop it. That is what people say, right? He can’t remember, doesn’t rightly know. It seems like a human thing. Strange. He had never been a human though. The darkness overtakes him, fogs over his mind like nanite smoke.

This was different though. No pain. Just darkness.

Reaper sleeps.

**

**“It’s not just a human thing, you know.”** Reyes’s face is uncomfortably close to his. Their noses almost touch and Reaper waves his arm sleepily in front of his face to try and swat the ghost away.

It goes right though Reyes, the ghost not phased in the slightest.

Wait. Sleep? Did…

Did he really go to sleep? He’s in the same room, the bed opposite him is empty, its covers meticulously made. It’s the same room from the last memory—

Time—

Whatever this bullshit he was being dragged through was.

**“Yes. You did. Congratulations, first time you’ve ever slept, right?”** Reyes sits on the bed next to him, his legs crossed. There isn’t enough space for him, but somehow he makes it work with his ghostly metaphysics.

His mind slowly drags itself through a smoky haze of sleep in an effort to become alert. “What’s not a human thing?” he backtracks the conversation a little.

**“Manners.”** Reyes gives Reaper a wolfish grin that makes him want to punch the ghost in the teeth.

Wait. Something clicks into place and he blinks.

“You hear my thoughts.” The words taste like acid in his mouth, burning as they exit like the bile from last night.

The ghost could read his mind.

Why does this come as a surprise to him?

And why does he immediately hate the very idea of a ghost being able to hear every single thought of his?

**“Probably because it’s a gross invasion of privacy or something?”** Reyes deadpans.

This time Reaper really does take a swing at the ghost, but his hand connects to the wall behind him with a crack. The sudden movement also makes it feel as if he’d just punched himself in the face.

He groans.

**“Mmm. The morning after injections. What a time to be alive.”**

“Die. Please.” Reaper mumbles into his hands as he drags them down his face. Ghosts should stay dead. They were less annoying if they didn’t talk all the time.

**“Already did. Now you’re stuck with me. And you better move or you’ll miss breakfast. I can’t remember if Morrison likes me enough yet to save me some.”**

Breakfast. Reaper’s stomach rumbles and he feels something gnawing at it. Hunger. Right. Much different to the frantic itching of nanites when they get starved of energy and begin to try and cannibalise themselves.

He much prefers the hunger of a living body.

He heaves himself out of bed and clutches his head for a moment as he waits for the world to settle down.

**“I wonder why we’re stuck in this bit of time.”** Reyes walks around the small room, picking through the various bits and pieces scattered on the floor (mostly on Reyes’s side). He eventually pauses and leans over Morrison’s bedside table to read the titles of a stack of paperback books, a small smile curling on his lips.

Reaper shrugs and pulls back the covers. He blinks, realises he’s shirtless and only has a pair of boxers on.

**“Oh yeah, you took off most of your clothes last night when you were a shivering mess on the bathroom floor. Jack’s face was a sight to behold when he finally had enough courage to open the door.”**

Reaper takes a deep breath, holds it. Lets it out. Clothing. “What do I wear?”

Reyes turns on him and smirks. **“Sorry, do you need my help getting dressed? I thought the walking Hot Topic clearance rack would know a thing or two about fashion.”**

Since Reaper knows he can’t throttle the ghost he settles for the mental image instead and glares at Reyes.

The ghost’s smile only grows wider. **“PT in the afternoon, but the morning is free recovery time, so sweats are fine. In that drawer.”** He points under the bed. Reaper opens it to find a hoodie and sweatpants—SEP stamped in bold white lettering on both of them. Reaper pulls them on while Reyes keeps talking. **“The second batch of injections is this afternoon, and that’s when Jack’ll be going, so be ready to deal with his mess when you get back.”**

“If we’re still here,” Reaper replied, almost praying for time to take him away from this place. He still felt like shit _and_ he had to deal with Morrison, surely it would just be easier to fall back through time again.

**“Be careful what you wish for. SEP is a shitshow, but the Crisis is even worse.”**

Reaper sighs, he would take killing omnics over having breakfast with Jack Morrison any day. He grits his teeth, just realising that Reyes has read his mind again. Why couldn’t he read Reyes’s back?

Reyes laughs, wheezing as if he’s just heard the funniest joke in the world. Reaper waits, feeling increasingly like he should be embarrassed about something. Reyes only laughs harder.

When the cackling finally subsides, Reyes looks at him. Reaper has seen that look before.

Pity.

**“Because cabrón, you’ve never bothered to _listen_.” ** Reyes doesn’t give Reaper time to reply and heads for the door. **“C’mon, cafeteria is this way.”**

He walks through the closed door and waits in the hallway for a moment before taking off again, Reaper unable to do anything but trail behind him.

And what did he make of that? _Listen?_ He hadn’t even known Reyes had survived until they had both fallen through time.

**“Mm, that’s a lie.”** Reyes glances back at him and rolls his eyes. **“If you actually had the balls to contemplate your own exis—**

Reaper tunes him out. Just because he hadn’t bothered to listen to him in the past doesn’t mean he has to start now. Besides, it might be even more unbearable to have Reyes’s thoughts crowding his mind.

He looks around at the passing rooms with little interest. The place seemed like every other secret military base he’d been to. Clean hallways, each indistinguishable from the next except for the signs at the ends. Medical to the left, cafeteria and yard to the right.

The ghost eventually leads him through into a subdued hall of soldiers. Some nurse their heads, while the rest either talk quietly or sit alone with haggard expressions.

**“I forgot how many were lost after the first round,”** Reyes speaks from beside him, grimacing as he looks at the missing seats.

Reaper just shrugs and moves to pick up a tray and load it with breakfast food. Reyes points out the things he likes and Reaper decides it’s too much effort to pick different items just to spite him. His head still throbs with every slight movement he makes. At least the pain in his knuckles has dulled.

**“Don’t forget the synthetic coffee, it’ll make the headache better,”** says Reyes. **“It tastes like shit and they only have it here because it’s un-caffeinated, but it’ll also be the only thing available for ten years after the crisis so you may as well get used to it now.”**

Reaper eyes him for a moment, but takes his word for it and fills up a mug with the black liquid. It _smells_ good. He’s never tried consuming liquids before on account of the whole…mouth situation he is used to dealing with.

His eyes widen a little as he realises.

He can _taste_ things now.

This will be the first time he tries food.

**“This is going to be fun,”** mutters Reyes from beside him.

He tries not to pay the ghost any mind, but out of the corner of his eye sees a smile pulling at Reyes’s lips.

Reaper faces the room, trying to figure out where to sit and spots a flash of blond waving frantically at him. Morrison has a spare seat beside him at a table with four other recruits at it. Two of them clutch their heads.

He looks elsewhere, trying to gauge where the furthest seat away from Morrison is.

His own face blocks the view.

Reaper leans around Reyes’s head.

Reyes doesn’t let him. The ghost pushes right up into his face and clicks his fingers. **“Reaper.”**

Reaper blinks. That’s the first time Reyes has said his name.

He doesn’t like it.

But the ghost pays him no mind. **“You are going to be stuck with Jack for the next. Twenty. Fucking. Years. You might not have to live through them all, pending wherever this shitty time travel takes us, but you may as well get used to the idea that Jack is a constant feature that isn’t going to go away.”**

Not unless Reaper kills him.

Reyes just rolls his eyes. **“Sit your ass down beside him. Now.”** He points at Jack and makes a face, like Reaper is just some petulant child having a tantrum.

Reaper stares at the ghost.

Reyes just hardens his expression and keeps pointing.

The chair scrapes loudly against the cheap linoleum flooring as Reaper pulls it out and sits down. He steadfastly ignores Jack’s visibly brighter face and the rest of the table as he tries to figure out what to eat first.

He picks up the fork and goes for the pile of steaming yellow…stuff.

**“Eggs,”** Reyes supplies.

He sniffs them first, trying to figure out what they smell like.

**“They smell like eggs.”** Reyes looks at him thoughtfully. **“Just eat them. Most of the food here was shit, but the breakfasts were actually good.”**

Reaper slowly puts the fork in his mouth. His jaw almost moves on its own, like a muscle memory, he chews the eggs.

And he shuts his eyes.

Because, _holy shit_ , they are good.

Better than good. Everything about this is amazing. Reaper can feel the texture, can _taste._

He tastes eggs.

And they’re perfect.

When he finishes the first bite he opens his eyes to gather more eggs onto his fork. The next serving is halfway to his mouth before he realises that the entire table is staring at him.

“Uh.” Reaper is at a loss for words.

Morrison raises an eyebrow at him.

Reaper scrambles for something to say. “Good eggs?”

Apparently, it was the right thing to say because they all burst out laughing.

“You look like you just tasted heaven, Reyes,” says the soldier sitting across from him. She shakes her head, “I mean, the eggs are ok, but they aren’t _that_ good.”

“I bet the bacon is even better,” says Morrison. “They ran out before I got here and they won’t give out second helpings.” He looks wistfully at the pile of pink meat sitting beside Reaper’s eggs.

Bacon. Reaper doesn’t know whether he’s ready to try anything else. He’d probably just embarrass himself.

Not that it mattered, he tells himself quickly. He didn’t care one iota whether he ruins Reyes’s social standing.

**“You’ll be pleased to know then, that I don’t have one other than ‘prickly asshole you shouldn’t cross.’”** Reyes says from beside him as he absently taps his rhythm out on the table. **“And you seem to play the part pretty well.”**

Reaper’s eye twitches and he ignores Reyes and picks up the bacon with the fork. It did smell… interesting.

Mmm… better not.

Without thinking, he holds it out to Morrison instead.

Reaper is unprepared. He has no agency in this body. That’s what he tells himself as his heart stutters to a halt at the look Morrison gives him. It’s like the sun had suddenly decided to blaze to life in the middle of the cafeteria. Reaper blinks, and no, it isn’t the sun, Morrison had just decided to smile with his entire face.

Reyes laughs quietly. Reaper _thinks_ he hears him say, **“I miss that.”**

“Aw,” says Morrison, eyes twinkling. “Is this because I tucked you in last night?”

Reaper yanks the fork back, but not before Morrison steals the bacon from the end of it and shoves it in his mouth.

Reaper contemplates stabbing him in the eye with the fork but Morrison leaps up from his chair and backs far enough away from the table to be out of fork-stabbing range. He holds his arms up in the ‘I surrender’ position and is clearly trying not to laugh with a mouth full of bacon as Reaper glares at him.

Reyes joins the rest of the soldiers around the table as they howl with laughter.

Reaper looks down at his eggs and prays for the colors to begin to drain out of them, no matter how good they are.

The eggs stay yellow.

Reaper picks up another fork-full of eggs and shoves it in his mouth, chewing stonily and trying not to look at Morrison as he laughs like a summer breeze.

**

He can hear Morrison vomiting in the tiny bathroom. He lies on his bed, in the dark. Reyes sits beside him, tapping his rhythm on the wall. Reaper’s hand taps out the same rhythm on his chest.

He’s given up trying to stop it. Maybe if he just gives in to it, Reyes will get bored of trying to annoy him so much.

He turns over the memories of the day in his mind. It hadn’t been as terrible as he had thought it would be, all in all. PT had let him test the physical limits of this body and he had found that he quite likes the burn of muscle movement in his arms and legs when they are pushed. Much better than the deep ache of dying nanites.

The retching from the bathroom stops for a moment and Reaper pauses in his thoughts, listening out. But then it starts again and Morrison groans.

It pauses again shortly after and Reaper hears Morrison cursing quietly to himself.

Reyes looks towards the bathroom, a little crease between his eyebrows. The ghost has taken to fashioning himself wearing a hoody with the Overwatch and Blackwatch symbols emblazoned on the arms. His old uniform. When Reaper called him out on it when they were alone, he had just shrugged and said there was a reason he had worn a hoodie as a uniform for his entire tenor as the Blackwatch commander.

**“It’s more comfortable than a sleeveless leather coat,”** he eventually spelled out.

“Don’t knock it till you try it,” he had replied. Though, Reaper had to admit he did like the feel of the SEP jumper, even if it was a little plain.

He hasn’t heard a peep from the bathroom for a good five minutes now.

He should probably check whether Morrison is still alive. He waits another two minutes before he sighs and rolls off his bed, padding over to the bathroom door.

He hesitates.

Should he knock?

Is it locked?

He tries the handle and finds that it isn’t locked, and because he is already halfway to opening the door, he gives in and pushes it open.

He blinks at the sight that greets him.

Morrison is completely naked and shivering on the white tiles.

Reaper closes the door again.

Sucks in a deep breath and tries to quell his heart. He can’t do anything about the warmth that is spreading up his neck and to his cheeks.

Reyes stares at him. **“I mean, _I’ve_ seen his dick before. Didn’t know it was going to shock _you_ so much though.”**

_Ok. Oooooooooo-K_. Reaper pinches the bridge of his nose. He could just leave Morrison on the bathroom floor. That was option A.

A good, solid option.

What if he just went to sleep now and the colors drained and he fell through time again? No consequences. Young Reyes would have to deal with it.

But what if the colors _didn’t_ drain away during the night? And he was stuck with Morrison for the rest of SEP? Or he died and Reaper ends up getting the blame? And consequently young Reyes, ergo, no existence for him.

Fuck.

So, option B. Reaper stalks across the room and strips Morrison’s blanket from his perfectly made bed. He carries it back to the bathroom, takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, opens the door, and throws the blanket onto Morrison.

**“I didn’t know you were such a prude,”** Reyes laughs from behind him.

Reaper opens one eye. Despite the blind throw, he had managed to get good coverage. Morrison’s limbs stick out of the blanket, but Reaper would fix them in a moment.

Ok, part one was a success. He walks back out of the bathroom and finds Morrison’s water glass on his bedside table. Back into the bathroom, and he flushes Morrison’s mess down the toilet before turning to the sink and filling up the glass with water.

Right.

Reaper kneels down and pulls the blanket over most of Morrison’s limbs. Morrison finally realises there’s a blanket and he clutches at it, shivers wracking his body.

Reaper holds out the glass of water to the human disaster on the floor.

**“Pretty sure he can’t drink the water right now,”** Reyes says, kneeling down on the other side of Morrison.

Reaper gives a long-suffering sigh. _Fine._ “Hey,” he pokes Morrison. “Can you get up?”

Morrison just groans in response and clutches the blanket closer. Reaper waits. And waits. His thighs start to strain from the crouch so he sits down on the white-tiled floor and waits for Morrison’s shivering to slow down. Absently, he taps the rhythm on his knee.

And he waits…

“Skin,” the haggard whisper from the floor makes Reaper jerk his head up.

He’d dozed for a moment. That was novel. He tries to blink the tiredness away. “What?”

“Skin. Feels. Like fire,” Morrison grits out. “But cold.”

Reaper nods. That was indeed what it had felt like the night before. Honestly though, Morrison should stop being a baby. This was nothing compared to a billion malfunctioning nanites constantly trying to eat themselves—

“Need warmth,” Morrison shivers violently again.

“It’ll be warmer in your bed,” Reaper offers. The tiles were cold.

“Can’t move.”

“Sure you can. I managed it last night.”

“ _I_ carried you.”

Reaper is silent. Yes. That had happened. “I’ll help you then,” he sighs, resigning himself to this cruel twist of fate.

Morrison shivers in response and Reaper leans over him, hands fluttering as he tries to figure out the best way to lift him up without dislodging the blanket.

“You have to help me. Help you.” Reaper says to the lump where Morrison has hidden his face in the blanket. He looks up at his ghost, wondering if this would be a moment Reyes might dispense some kind of invaluable, if unwarranted, knowledge.

The ghost has conjured himself a popcorn bowl. Reyes shoves a handful of popcorn into his mouth as he watches him deal with Morrison.

Unbelievable.

**“Don’t look at me like that,”** Reyes says from around a mouthful of popcorn. **“This is the most entertained I’ve been in years.”**

So he is alone in this. Fine _. Fine._ Not like he needs Reyes’s help anyway.

**“When have you ever needed my help? You’re a strong, independent AI who don’t need no ghost. I’m sure you can figure out how to drag naked Jack to bed without me.”** He eats another bit of his ghostly popcorn.

Reaper’s jaw clenches and he digs his hands under Morrison’s arms, heaving him upward. Morrison puts in a bit of effort too and Reaper stands up with Morrison sagging against him. Morrison’s teeth chatter as he clutches the blanket closer.

Ok. The blanket had survived the trip up.

Hopefully it would survive the trip across the room—

Yeah, no. Reaper accidentally steps on it as he attempts to wedge both of them through the bathroom door and once they pop out the other side, they are one blanket down.

Morrison’s hands clutch at Reaper’s hoodie while Reaper attempts to look anywhere but _down_ and stop Morrison from falling out of his arms. God, despite how skinny he still is, he is heavy.

Reyes has fallen strangely silent.

Reaper spares him a glance and sees that the ghost is clutching his stomach while he lies on the floor, ghost popcorn strewn around him as he shakes. Reaper would think he’s having a seizure if it wasn’t for the gasps he takes every now and then.

Reaper steels himself and heaves Morrison forward the last few steps to his bed where he almost throws the naked man onto the mattress. Morrison lands with a yelp and quickly curls around, clutching his legs to his chest as another bout of shivers wracks his body.

Reaper turns his back on Morrison as soon as he’s out of his arms. He heaves a sigh and once again prays that time will take him away from this place.

Time does no such thing.

Meanwhile Reyes sits slumped against the bathroom doorframe, wiping his eyes. **“Fuck. That was the funniest shit I’ve seen in a decade.”**

“I’m glad one of us is amused,” Reaper says through his teeth. He steps over the ghost and into the bathroom again, locates the glass of water and picks up the discarded blanket.

Reyes has moved to stand over Morrison as he clutches a blanket around him. Slowly, the shivers subside.

Reaper frowns in confusion at the blanket in his hands at the same time Reyes says, **“I think we have a problem.”**

Reaper looks at the blanket Morrison is shivering under. Then back to his hands. He puts the glass of water down next to the empty one on his bedside table.

**“You threw him onto our bed.”**

Reaper is silent for a long moment, processing the situation. When he comes up empty he just says, “I can see that.”

“Not going to tuck me in, Reyes?” the whisper is weak from underneath the blankets.

“Fuck you, Morrison.” Reaper strangles the blanket in his hands and imagines it’s Morrison’s stupid neck instead.

“S’okay,” the whisper comes again, so quiet that Reaper strains to hear it. “I’ll still tuck you in next time.”

Reaper stills.

Takes a deep breath. Two steps towards Morrison’s empty bed and he changes his mind, lying down on the thinly-carpeted floor instead. He pulls Morrison’s blanket over himself and turns his back on the naked man sleeping in his bed.

Reyes sits beside him. The ghost wears a quiet smile and for once doesn’t say anything. Just taps his rhythm gently on his knee.

Reaper just lets the darkness of sleep take him.

**

“Hey,” the whisper comes out of the dark and Reaper rolls over on the hard floor.

He blinks, trying to remember where he is and what is happening.

Three things become apparent:

One, no pain. Good. There is still no pain.

Two, he’s lying on the floor.

Three, he has a blanket.

Last night comes flooding back and Reaper bolts upright, flinging the blanket away from himself like it is some kind of venomous snake. There’s a click and his bedside table lamp blazes to life, lighting the room. Reaper looks around, startled, and straight into a pair of wide blue eyes.

Morrison stares at him with something akin to horror on his face. “Why am I in your bed, Reyes?”

Reaper blinks. He looks to the bathroom and opens his mouth—

“Why am I _naked_ in your bed?”

Reaper chokes on what he was about to say. He can feel his face heating up as he comes to a horrific realisation of what it must look like. “I…” he feels a sharp whine in his ears—had time come to take him away? Save him from this nightmare?

No, it hadn’t. It was just a horrendous sense of panic.

“I-we-nothing,” he stammers, mouth suddenly dry. “Nothing happened.”

“You know how this looks right?” Morrison’s own face is flushed, eyes wide.

“You took off all your clothes in the bathroom!” Reaper yells at him. Was Morrison blaming this on him? At least when he had passed out, he’d had the decency to leave his fucking boxers on.

“You mean… we started this in the bathroom?”

Reaper opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. He shakes his head in silent denial of what Morrison is insinuating.

Morrison stares at him for a moment longer before he grins. It’s that full-faced grin, the dazzling one that demands attention. “I’m just fuckin’ with you Reyes. I remember what happened last night.” He slumps back down onto Reaper’s pillow and wheezes out a laugh before he clutches his head and groans.

Reaper stares. He sits and stares. The faint panic slowly bubbles into anger and he is about to launch himself at Morrison and strangle him for good when Reyes shows up in front of Reaper.

**“Oh, you sweet summer child.”** Reyes pats the side of Reaper's face with his hand. **“He got you good. Also, might want to rethink strangling him seeing as he’s still naked in your bed. I wonder what that’ll look like.”** The ghost raises his eyebrows.

“Fuck you,” Reaper says to both Morrison and Reyes. He gets off the floor, wincing at the stiffness in his back. He rolls his shoulders and stretches, hoodie pulling up as he puts his arms above his head. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Morrison become suddenly very interested in something on the ceiling.

Reaper chews on the inside of his cheek—

His stomach rumbles, distracting him.

Breakfast. Right. Maybe he could try bacon this morning—

“Hey Reyes,” Morrison calls out from behind him. Reaper pauses at the door, but he doesn’t turn around. “Thanks.” Morrison says it softly, like it actually _meant_ something to him.

Reaper huffs out a breath. He didn’t do it for thanks, he did it because…

He doesn’t want…time to fuck over his existence… or something?

Reyes raises an eyebrow at him from the hallway. **“Even I’m unconvinced by that attempt at rationalisation.”**

**

Reaper sits at the breakfast table absently tapping his fork against his empty tray while one of the soldiers from yesterday recounts her horrid night. Reaper feels like butting in and mentioning that it can’t have been worse than his, but then he’d probably have to deal with questions about Morrison being naked.

Instead he tries to remember the taste of the bacon.

Even better than the eggs. Somehow.

Beside him, Reyes perks up a little and points at Morrison as he enters the room. The man has bags under his eyes and he looks like shit, but his blue eyes sparkle all the same when they meet Reaper’s from across the room.

Reaper frowns at him.

Morrison grins back.

**“Sorry, do you two want to get a room?”** Reyes wiggles his eyebrows at him.

Since Reaper can’t answer out loud he settles for an image of himself punching Reyes in the face. He’s saved from the ghost’s smug grin when Morrison slides into the empty seat Reyes occupies. The ghost moves one chair over, leaving Reaper to stare at the enormous pile of food on Morrison’s tray.

“Fucking starving,” says Morrison through a mouthful of beans.

“Did you have fun vomiting up your guts last night, Morrison?” asks the soldier from yesterday. Reaper thinks her name is O’Neil.

“The vomiting wasn’t the fun part,” says Morrison pointing his fork at her. “The fun part was Reyes dragging me through the room and accidentally throwing me on his bed.”

Reaper leans his head into his hands. Right. So he was just going to have to live through this hell.

“Aw,” says O’Neil, “and did he tuck you in as well?”

Reaper picks up his fork, readying it into stab position as he turns to Morrison. He freezes when Morrison just smiles at him and holds out his own fork, loaded with a piece of bacon.

“Nah,” he says, blue eyes sparkling mischievously. “But I’ll still give him my bacon.”

Reaper looks at the peace offering. He grinds his teeth, knowing he should just refuse it.

But the bacon is good.

_Really good._

So he takes it and he eats it and as the colors drain from the world and as Reaper begins to fall, he wonders if it was worth it.

***

**“Of course it was. Bacon is delicious.”** Reyes taps his metal bars as they fall through the white wasteland.

Reaper ignores him and hopes that wherever they end up next, it doesn’t have Jack Morrison in it.

***

Then the colors drain back in and he vomits into a toilet.

His muscles are bigger.

He feels like shit.

And all he can think is _, not again._

*******

SEP passes like that. In and out of time Reaper and Reyes fall.

Three more times Reaper ends up vomiting in that tiny bathroom, feeling like his skin is simultaneously being set on fire and bathed in a glacier, and three more times he offers Morrison his bacon the morning after in thanks for dragging him to bed and making sure he went to sleep.

He does the same for Morrison and receives bacon in return. He never tucks him in though. And he doesn’t make the same mistake as he did that first time. Morrison stays on his side of the room.

Neither of them mention their little bacon economy and Reaper likes it that way. It means he doesn’t have to think about the fact that he is accepting something from his greatest enemy.

But he takes it anyway.

And when he does, the colors drain away again and he starts the fall.

***

Time speeds up. Or perhaps their falling does. In and out of time.

As they fall, Reyes tells him that the SEP program was about fifteen months long, and a chunk of it was spent in medical so Reaper should be thankful he doesn’t have to live through that.

They begin to flash through time again, not landing in Reyes’s body for long enough to take control, just to witness a single moment.

*

Weapon training. He’s aiming down the scope of a rifle at a dummy target half a kilometre away. His eyes can see every detail. He pulls the trigger and the target rocks backwards.

*

Hand to hand combat.  
Gabriel punches Morrison in the face.

Reaper is almost disappointed he’s not in control as he feels deep satisfaction at watching Morrison’s face rock backwards. He also winces.

*

Morrison looks at him and raises an eyebrow. “You can call me Jack, you know.”  
Gabriel tilts his head and gives Jack a wry smile. “I know.”  
“Can I call you Gabriel?” asks Jack. He looks nervous.  
And Gabriel—

Reaper—

Reyes—

—shakes his head at this blonde idiot.

*

They sit in the mess hall watching the news. A reporter urgently speaks over grainy footage of a burning building, gunfire in the background.  
An omnium in Russia has reactivated.  
Its AI gone rogue. 

*

He yells orders at his squad. They listen. Neutralize the threat. They are the fastest team in SEP. He trains them even harder.

*

Morrison smiles at him from across the room and it makes his heart stutter.  
_Fuck_.  
The single word echoes through his head as he smiles back.

*

Last round of injections.  
Jack tucks him in that night.  
And the next day Jack goes for his. 

*

He sits at the breakfast table alone, pushing around the uneaten bacon on the tray.  
For the first time in a long time he is scared.  
And it’s because Jack isn’t here—

*

Jack looks haggard as he stumbles into their shared room. His skin is pasty and he shivers as he falls through the door.  
“Jack, hey. Hey!” Reaper hears himself say as he moves towards Jack, just managing to catch him as he falls. He lies shivering in Gabriel’s arms.  
“They released me. Tori didn’t make it. Neither did Yousef.” Jack’s voice is barely a whisper.  
But he’s alive. The last round of injections had wiped another quarter of the soldiers out. Not many left.  
But Jack is alive. And Gabriel—

No. Reaper.

He drags Jack to bed and pulls the blanket over him.

“Aww,” Jack’s eyes look strangely vulnerable as he stares up into Reaper’s face. “You tucked me in.”

Reaper tries not to feel the tiny smile tug at his mouth as he turns away. Something catches his wrist and he looks down at Jack’s hand.

“Stay. Please?” Jack looks completely out of it. But he’s still holding onto his hand. So Reaper shrugs and sits down on the floor, leaning against Jack’s bed.

He nods off to the sound of Jack’s soft breathing.

***

More omniums have activated.  
The US government has issued a crisis emergency.  
Millions are being evacuated.  
The rest are being slaughtered by rogue omnics.

*

He sits with senior officers and other SEP squad leaders and they outline a plan. The officers are waiting for clearance to send out SEP soldiers to try and stop the omnics.  
He shakes his head.  
They didn’t stand a chance. There were so many, so many—

*

O’Neil’s lung gets shredded by a Bastion turret. She chokes blood onto him as she tries to tell him to leave her behind.  
She dies.  
And he does. 

*

He sits with Jack in the empty cafeteria. It’s three AM and neither of them can sleep. Jack stares at his hands as they shake.  
Gabriel stares at nothing. Makes a vow to himself that it won’t happen again.  
_No one left behind._  
When he finishes his silent mantra, a promise to himself and the future, he looks up to meet Jack’s eyes.  
Wonders what it would be like to kiss him. 

*

The LA omnium goes rogue.

***

Reaper falls in and out of Reyes’s life for three days.

Snatches of moments.

Through it all the void inside has opened again.

At any moment he might slip as he waits for the news.

***

Jack holds him as he waits. He doesn’t say anything.  
Just holds on.

*

The pit inside yawns wide. Gabriel clutches at Jack to stop himself from tumbling over the edge.

*

He gets the call.  
She made it out.  
His sister is alive. 

*

The SEP training program is officially shutting down. The government doesn’t have enough resources to continue it.  
They are the first and last super soldiers.  
The global economy has gone to shit.  
Millions are dead.  
Food is rationed.  
Status: Awaiting Orders. 

***

The base is in blackout, the flood lights off, and Gabriel—

Reaper—

Reaper lies on the cool concrete roof of a building, staring at the millions of stars. Billions of them twinkling bright, each one trying to outshine the others.

Jack lies next to him. Almost close enough to touch, but they don’t. Reyes lies next to Reaper, absently tapping his rhythm out on the roof. It doesn’t take long before Reaper joins in, his finger moving on its own accord to follow in time, tapping-tapping-tapping his chest.

“What’s that?” Jack’s voice is quiet from beside him.

Reaper turns from the stars to see them reflected in Jack’s midnight eyes. It’s almost like time stands still and for just a moment he falls into those endless blue depths.

“What’s what?” Reaper asks when he finally stops the strange freefall.

Jack turns back to the stars. “The tapping—

Reaper’s hand stills—

—You’re… it’s strange. And, like, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re… different… when you tap it.”

Reaper curls his hand into a fist.

“Not in a bad way or anything,” Jack says quickly. “But it’s just… I wanted to ask whether you were ok?”

“I…” Reaper begins that sentence and immediately stalls, not really knowing what to say to that. Or how to respond. He looks around for Reyes, wondering whether the ghost was going to butt in with an inappropriate comment or a bad joke. It has been more than five minutes since Reyes last spoke to him, a suspiciously long time for the troublesome ghost—

He’s alone.

Reyes is gone.

Reaper is on the roof, with Jack.

Alone.

He frowns. Because he _should_ be feeling something akin to relief, or even joy, but he just feels… empty.

_Strange._

“Gabriel,” Jack says the name softly, like it is a forbidden thing that he is broaching for the first time.

It brings Reaper’s attention back to the question. Demands his attention.

Is he ok? Reaper honestly has no idea. He’s never bothered to ask himself that before. He’s never bothered to ask a lot of things. Perhaps that’s where it all went wrong.

What does it take to question the world?

“What would you do,” Reaper says abruptly, “if you could change your fate, but every choice, every chance that is given to you, might lead to your own…un-existence.”

He hears Jack’s head turn to him, his body shifting on the roof, but Reaper pays him no mind. Just stares at the stars while Jack stares at him.

A tiny part of him asks why he hasn’t just killed Jack yet? Why does Reaper tolerate him? They were mortal enemies.

Weren’t they?

“I would wonder,” Jack chews thoroughly on his words before he says them, “why I would want to change my fate? Would I want to change it because I did something wrong? Or someone important died and I could have stopped it?” He pauses and waits to see if Reaper interjects. When he doesn’t, Jack continues, subdued. “I don’t know whether I could use that chance, even if it meant I, or someone important to me was gone forever. I think we have to live with ourselves.”

“What if you could change whether you ever existed in the first place?” he repeats.

This time Jack sits up to look at him. When he lies back down again, he has closed the gap between them, his shoulder pushed up against Reaper’s, a warmth amongst the chill night. Reaper doesn’t move away.

“I would ask why you would want to stop existing.”

Reaper stares at the space between the stars.

Why does he want to die?

“Existence… _hurts_.” Reaper begins to tap his ghost’s rhythm again. Somehow the absence of it is more unsettling than the constant noise. As if he were more alone without his ghost continually tapping it.

Why does he want to live?

Jack snorts. “Well… yeah. I think that’s just life in general though. I mean I could spout some high school level philosophic bullshit about validating existence, but at the end of the day, life just… is. We move through it, and make choices, and fuck up. The world is fucked. Everything is fucked. But I don’t think I would ever want to stop existing. We’re all valid, and we all make choices to validate our existence.”

“But what if we don’t have a choice? What if fate is set and we’re all just hurtling towards an inevitable conclusion?” Reaper wonders…does he truly have a choice to end it? He had been too much of a coward to jump off that building, but is he strong enough to face what is waiting for him again at the end of all this?

“Dude. I didn’t really expect existential nihilism tonight.” Jack stares at him again. “I mean, we’re all going to die, if that’s what you mean. You’ve told _me_ that before. That’s just how it is. I think the choices we make during life are what determines our fate. We just need to try and be good people. Make good choices.”

When Reaper doesn’t say anything Jack sighs.

“I used to think that it was inevitable that I would inherit the farm and live in bumfuck Indiana for the rest of my life. I made a choice to change that, much to my family’s disappointment. There was no way in hell I was going to spend the rest of my life farming fucking corn.”

Reaper snorts, a corn farmer…if Jack had just been a corn farmer none of this would have happened.

No. That’s not true…was it strictly anyone’s fault or choice or fate that he ended up here, on a roof, thirty years in the past and talking to his mortal enemy like he was a friend.

“Why didn’t you stay?” he asks.

“What? Aside from getting away from the excitement of farming corn for the rest of my life?” Jack pauses, is quiet for a moment. “I guess I just want to be better. Do better. Help people. Seems kind of naive of me to think that I could ever achieve something like that in this fucked up world. I guess the way I see it, is that every moment I make a choice to stay here, is a moment I can use to help someone.”

“You think you can save the world?” Reaper almost laughs. It doesn’t matter that it actually ends up happening, just that it does sound hopelessly optimistic.

“No. I think _we_ can save it. Together”

Reaper blinks. And suddenly he sees them. A million billion threads. People’s choices, woven and torn, cut and _made_. All throughout history, life, time. They weave themselves together, make themselves, tear themselves apart. They create. Die. Unmake.

They forget.

They remember.

And through it all, life simply goes on.

Time moves forward.

Billions of people forge themselves through the choices they make.

“I’m sure you would have been a pretty good corn farmer,” Reaper mutters eventually.

“I’m a better soldier.”

Reaper taps out his rhythm. Who was he really?

What choices had he ever made?

His hand comes to a juddering halt. Silence pervades the space on the roof, he hears nothing except the slow huff of Jack’s breath. He looks up into the stars and finds them bleeding.

The tiny dots of white growing larger and larger, filling up the dark spaces in between, like ink in water they eat the darkness away.

Reaper looks at Jack. Jack looks back and raises an eyebrow, there’s something there, in the way he is looking at him. At Reaper.

As though he sees him.

“I’m not ok,” he says as he begins to fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has art by the amazing Ohappyfair! [Go check it out cause it's super rad](http://ohappyfair.tumblr.com/post/163040599826/this-was-one-of-my-two-pieces-for-the-reaper76-big) :D
> 
> Thanks once again to [PrinceInky](http://princeinky.tumblr.com/) for beta reading this chapter!
> 
> Come and hang out with me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/Jakallx) and [tumblr](http://jakallx.tumblr.com/) :)


	4. The Leader Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay on this one. Between graduating, sort-of quitting my job, and other crazy things, life has been a little nuts lately. 
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy the chapter! :) I should have the next one out by this weekend.

_I slip up, I'm on the edge now_  
_They see me, and I nearly_  
_I nearly lose my grip, but you held on to me_  
_And you shake me, and tell me that I'm okay, but_  
_I swear they smell the blood on me  
_ _I hear them coming for me_

          - Sampha. _Blood on Me._

“Where were you?” Reaper demands as they hurtle through the white space. He almost doesn’t quite know why he asks it. Why he should care?

Why does he suddenly feel like an undertow has him in its grasp and he is slowly being dragged out to sea?

There is no one on the shore to save him. He is alone.

And he’s never even been swimming before.

 **“I felt it best if you had that conversation just with Jack. Besides, I got my fill of existential armchair philosophy when I had to oversee Gerard’s Talon investigation for three years.”** There’s a fondness in Reyes’s tone, but the words have an edge to them. Sorrow? Reaper doesn’t know. He’s coming to a realisation that he doesn’t know a lot of things.

“Do you remember?” Reaper asks instead.

 **“Remember what?”** Reyes’s tapping misses a beat.

“That conversation.”

 **“Ah. Do _I_ remember having it? No.” **Reyes shrugs and raises his eyebrows at Reaper. **“Do you want to hear my theories as to why I don’t?”**

“Is it because this is all some kind of sick dreamworld brought on by whatever failed technology was in that warehouse?” Reaper hoped to whatever gods were out there that his theory was true. Because, if it wasn’t a dream…

Where did that leave him?

Reyes gives him a _look_. **“You do realise that you almost had yourself a little panic attack when you realised you’d slept for the _first_ time, right?”**

Reaper huffs out a breath. “So it’s not a dream…since I can’t sleep,” he tacks on the last part bitterly. He quite likes sleep. That nothingness. A restful numbness. “What is it then? Am I malfunctioning?” He hates the way he sounds hopeful, as if his processors malfunctioning might offer some explanation as to why he’s said and done the things he has in the last weeks, years, months, _days?_ How long had they been falling?

Reyes considers him for a moment, head tilted, eyes unreadable. He looks like an owl, Reaper thinks, and instantly gets angry with himself for making the comparison. **“I doubt you’re malfunctioning. You had no idea what my life was like since you never bothered to find anything out other than what was in newsreels and bad opinion pieces. Besides, you just want to give yourself an easy way out and I’m not going to let you. No. Time. Time is chewing us up and spitting us back out a la Wolverine in Days of Future Past style.”**

“Who is Wolverine?” Reaper asks. An Overwatch agent? He’s never heard of him before.

Reyes looks at him unimpressed. **“Boy, you and I are going to have a movie night when all this is over, or we get a spare moment. Anyway,”** Reyes waves a hand dismissing the reference, **“that’s not important. What’s important is that our _minds_ are being shat through time and into my body again and again. And that leaves us with a couple of options in terms of how this is going to play out.”**

“Which are?”

**“Well, why don’t you lay it on me? Use those AI processors for something.”**

“According to you, I don’t have processors now.” Reaper narrows his eyes.

Reyes doesn’t move a muscle. **“And isn’t that an interesting dilemma.”** He waits, as if he expects Reaper to continue that particular thread of the conversation.

Reaper feels no way inclined to give the ghost what he wants.

_Coward._

He ignores the rogue thought. “So option one of time travel: I kill myself… you. In the past. You die. I never exist. We don’t find out what happens to the timeline.”

Reyes shrugs and makes a ‘I guess’ gesture. **“Ah, well. Since we’ve been through that little situation more than a couple of times now and you _haven’t_ killed yourself, or Jack might I add, I’m going to assume you’ve given up on that option. We can wax philosophy of time travel all day and how you can’t actually kill yourself due to time paradoxes and how you have no choice in fate and blah, blah, blah, poor me, poor me or we can move onto more interesting options.”**

Reaper stares at him through hooded eyes. “Fine,” he grates out. “What other options are there?”

And just like that he has apparently decided that he isn’t going to kill Reyes. He drags a hand down his face and finds it the smooth carbon fibre of the owl skull mask. Curious. He briefly wonders what is underneath it.

 **“All right, that’s more like it.”** Reyes smiles encouragingly at him. **“So option _dos_ , multiverse theory. In which case, just by virtue of being flung back in time, we’ve created another timeline separate from our original. Which means, you should be able to do whatever you want and the paradoxes don’t apply.”**

Reaper sighs and decides to play along. “But you don’t think this one is true?”

Reyes grins, **“I think it has the most potential to be true. But I don’t think it’s true.”**

“Why?”

**“Because I’m here. Falling with you.”**

“You think I would have just killed you by now?” Reaper almost feels insulted. Hasn’t Reyes been listening to his thoughts this entire time?

**“I find it hard to believe you would ever want to return to that reality where you suffer during every waking moment. And that is every moment. Because you can’t sleep. You can’t dream. You can’t live.”**

_You can’t make choices_ , the unspoken thought flits across the space between them.

“You think I haven’t made a choice this entire time?” Reaper growls. He pushes up against Reyes’s cage bars, wrapping his clawed hands around them. “I’ve had to live through your life just so I get that option in the future!” he yells, voice rough and entirely different from Reyes’s.

He wasn’t just being dragged along. He had agency.

He could live—

_Oh._

Reaper leans back from the bars.

Shakes his head at the ghost. Reyes’s eyes are uncompromising.

Reaper grinds his teeth. His not-teeth in his not-body in this not-reality. He changes tact. “How then? How did _I_ get pulled back through time?”

There. That shouldn’t be possible to answer. He is just an AI code inhabiting the nanites, giving them direction, control. There is no feasible explanation as to why he should have been dragged back through time.

 **“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe you _aren’t_ just an AI inhabiting the damaged nanites of a dead man. I’m not sure if you’ve realised, but my brain as it is now—** Reyes points at Reaper’s head— **isn’t made up of zeros and ones.”**

But…if he wasn’t just a bunch of zeros and ones… “What am I then?”

Reyes shrugs, fixes him in his gaze. **“I don’t think I should be the one to answer that. That’s your prerogative.”**

“How could I possibly get transported back through time? I have not lived it. I was not born. I was made. And you can’t manufacture a...a soul,” Reaper hisses.

**“Now you’re just being reductive. You’ve seen the omnics in the last few years. Some claim they have souls. They’re people. Capable of thoughts. Choices. Do you really think _time_ would distinguish between them? If you were just a bunch of code in some nanites I doubt you would have survived the first three seconds—**

“What are you trying to do?” Reaper cuts in savagely. He feels his anger boil up from his stomach. He wants to reach out and hit something. Instead, he tethers the anger into a cold fury and settles for a growl. “You think you can convince me I’m not what I know I am? I was told what I was and who I should be from the start! I did not have a choice! I—

Reaper stops. He stops and he thinks. His breath quickens as he stares at a dead man. At a ghost. At an impossibility. At a soul.

He looks at his own hands. Wonders what face he wears in this plane. Wonders what he would look like if the nanites hadn’t been coded to Reyes’s last bodily state.

What was he?

Reyes waits with a carefully neutral expression on his face.

And Reaper starts shaking his head. “No,” he growls at the ghost. “No. Don’t you do this to me.”

At that Reyes barks a laugh. **“You thought I was dead for five years. You did not once question what you were. Time to wake up to reality.”**

And they fall out of the timeless place and into the battlefield.

***

Gabriel leads his squad. SEP soldiers, all of them.  
They climb over the rubble of a destroyed city. He just narrowly avoids stepping on an arm poking out of the debris below him.  
The smell makes him want to vomit.  
He’s not used to it. You don’t get used to the smell of decomposing flesh and burnt bodies.  
But he doesn’t vomit. Not anymore.  
Someone utters a muffled curse from behind him as they continue forward. 

* 

He screams into his comms as he helplessly watches Morrison run straight at a live bastion unit, narrowly avoiding the hail of bullets until he can leap up and over it.  
Morrison grunts as his shoulder takes the hit.  
Then Morrison is at the back of the unit, gun jammed up against its power core.  
And it’s the opening he needs. The terrified faces around him move when he tells them to.  
“I need an Evac unit now,” he yells into his comms as he lets the other squad members lead the civilians to safety while he leaps over fallen rubble to where Jack lies bleeding—  
And oh god oh god oh god

*

He sits next to Jack the whole evac ride back to base.

*

Sits beside his bed until he wakes up.  
Gets lost in those blue eyes once they finally open.  
Can’t help but laugh when Jack asks whether Gabriel had tucked him in.

*

Jack is his spotter as he aims down the scope of the rifle.  
Target at five-hundred metres the blinking display tells him.  
He pulls the trigger and as the silence around him shatters with a crack the omnic drops.  
There’s no blood but Gabriel can’t help that feeling he has always had.  
A heaviness.  
Jack’s hand is on his shoulder, steadying him—

***

And somehow Reaper knows what it means.

***

Three of his squad.  
Jack and him pass a bottle of what had probably been the most expensive vodka in the bar back and forth. They sit against one of the only remaining walls of what had been a five-star hotel and was now mostly rubble.  
Omnic threat in this quarter of the city: neutralised. For now.  
Three dead.  
Thirty-thousand casualties.  
One bottle of vodka.  
Jack falls asleep with his head on Gabriel’s shoulder as they wait for the evac.

*

Gabriel has a plan. He outlines it for the officers in the room. Tells them that the likelihood of success is probably less than ten percent.  
They ask him who he wants in his squad.  
He hesitates for the barest of seconds before he lists the few remaining SEP soldiers.  
And last of all,  
Jack Morrison.

*

They did it. They took out an omnium.  
Sariat lost both of her legs below the knees. Stepped on a mine that hadn’t been identified during the sweep.  
He got shot in the forearm. It hurts, but he’s ok.  
Marnez lost half his cheek to a bullet that also shattered most of his teeth.  
Gabriel feels that heaviness in him.  
But he also knows that they made it out alive.  
Jack stares at him.  
They sit beside each other in the shadows of the back of the dropship. Close. Barely any distance between them. He can see every line in Jack’s face. Can see the fullness of his lips. Wonders what they taste like.  
And Jack leans in.  
But he shakes his head. A minute movement.  
And he sighs as Jack looks away, bites his lip.  
Gabriel almost gives in to it, right then and there.  
But they couldn’t. Not now. Not while the world was ending.  
Not while the rest of the world watches their every move.

*

“We call it the Overwatch Initiative. We would like to offer you the honour of being the first Strike Commander, Captain Reyes.” The UN official smiles thinly. She is impeccably dressed and looks at him through piercingly intelligent eyes. Surrounding her are more suits, men mostly. They size him up. She has already reached a judgement.  
“And what does that entail?” he asks.  
“You will lead a squad, with the full backing of the UN, and you’re going to save the world.”  
Gabriel struggles not to grin, _oh how deluded they were_.  
He salutes her.  
And accepts the mission.

*

They were a strange bunch.  
A sniper. An engineer. A knight. An assassin.  
A soldier.  
And him.  
The leader.  
He doesn’t smile at them because he knows they don’t need it and they won’t believe it anyway.  
“Time to get to work.”

*

And slowly. They begin to win.  
One by one the Omniums fall. God Programs blown to pieces.  
Omnics have their minds returned to themselves.  
And sometimes they have to blow them up too.

*

He can never shake that heaviness.

*

And through it all, Jack looks at him.  
And he looks back.  
But that’s all it ever is.  
They have work to do.

*

Amari gets pregnant in the middle of the war.  
She continues to snipe omnics eight months in, breaks her own record twice. Gabriel and the others watch her in awe. He asks her to take leave and she tells him to go fuck himself and that she’ll take leave when the baby comes. Until then, she’s a soldier.  
He doesn’t ask again.  
Then she’s gone for barely two months before she’s back again, the baby safe.  
She fights with a renewed passion. A fury.  
He questions it once,  
And she says that she fights for a future for her daughter.  
“I fight to see her again, in a world that will let her thrive.”

*

He misses coffee. Gabriel looks mournfully down at the synthetic shit in his cup. Somehow it was even worse than the SEP stuff.  
“What’s wrong?” Jack raises an eyebrow at him.  
His lips twitch up, he has a lot to be grieving about and coffee seems like such a trivial thing. “Never thought I’d miss SEP coffee.”  
Ana nods next to him, she looks tired as she cradles her steaming tea. “I never thought they would run out of tea. Thought I’d died and gone to heaven when I found that box in the London rubble last week,” Ana says from beside him.  
Jack turns to her. “Wait, you found tea? _Real_ tea?”  
Ana takes a sip from her cup, eyes sparkling as she looks at him over the rim. That teacup is the most heavy-duty porcelain Gabriel’s ever seen. It’s probably survived more battlefields than even he has.  
“Wow, thanks for sharing, Ana,” Jack says sarcastically.  
Wait a second. Gabriel turns to her suspiciously. “Are you… You were late to the evac spot. Are you telling me I almost got my arm blown off for some fucking _tea_?” One of the remaining humanoid units had ambushed him while he had waited for Ana to show up to the rendezvous point. She had shot it in the head before he had had a chance to react.  
But _still_.  
She pats him on the cheek. “Gabriel, I would never be so careless as to let an omnic blow off your arm. And I didn’t.”  
He narrows his eyes at her.  
She smiles innocently.  
“The least you could do is share,” he says eventually.  
Ana cracks a smile and hops up to brew them tea in an old saucepan.

*** 

Reaper falls in and out of these moments, never living them, but forced to watch them all the same.

Reyes taps his rhythm against the bars of his cage.

Reaper wonders how he can bear it.

He falls faster and faster. Through the war. 

***

He hoists Fareeha onto his shoulders and runs through the base while the two-year-old squeals in joy.

*

He shoots omnic after omnic.

*

And slowly.  
Somehow.  
He knows they are winning.

***

He talks to a woman quietly.  
They sit close together, eating one of the better ration packs Gabriel had managed to bribe from the store that morning—

Reaper blinks as he stares, realises _he_ is here in time. The woman is familiar. Speaks Spanish to him. High cheekbones, long black hair pulled back in a messy braid. Looks exhausted. But there is a happiness, a sparkle in her eyes as she talks.

“Miguel says we’ll have the ceremony when it’s over—

The war, she means.

Reaper tilts his head to the side and tries to figure out where he’s seen her before and her next words die on her lips.

She mimics his expression. Slowly her lips quirk up, just a little, and she reaches towards him. “Oh. Hello. I haven’t seen you in a long time.”

And she takes his hand and gently squeezes it.

***

Gabriel sits on a balcony that overlooks the ocean.  
A full moon casts its light over him, bleeds its path into the ocean as if it expects him to follow it to the horizon.  
He holds a guitar and lazily plucks the strings—

Reaper stills as he realises he has fallen into this moment too. The last note fades into the night sky and Jack looks at him, into him. He says softly, “what is it?”

Reaper’s throat is dry. He tries to swallow, but he can’t. His fingers don’t move on the guitar.

He doesn’t know how.

 **“Ah, Niño. You don’t play with your fingers. You play with your heart.”** The ghost leans against the balcony and looks at Reaper with a quiet expression. A feeling ripples through Reaper like an aftershock from a distant earthquake. Melancholic. An ache.

Reaper experimentally plucks a string. The note sounds sad.

Wrong.

 **“Would you like me to show you how?”** Reyes leans down beside him.

Reaper sucks in a breath, about to protest. Ready to walk away, frustrated by his own incompetence. But he looks up at Jack, meets those perfect blue eyes and sees something there. An openness. Vulnerability. And he finds himself wishing, for just a moment, that he could do something for him.

 **“Here, let me show you,”** Reyes moves his ghostly arms to rest just above Reaper’s. He hesitates then, waiting for something.

And Reaper gives in, _just a little_ , he tells himself. Because he wants to hear the music. It feels like forever since he’s heard music.

He wants Jack to hear it.

So he lets Reyes in, lets him move Reaper’s fingers. As he plays, Reaper _feels_ it, the song, the rhythm, the music.

He knows this song. Frowns as Reyes plays and plays his beautiful song, fingers dancing over the strings.

Reaper remembers it, not just from that first moment in Reyes’s childhood, but from _before_. Or is it after? Perhaps all the really matters is that he remembers.

It had been the first thing he heard when he awoke screaming to a million nanites trying to eat themselves from within. When he had felt that hunger, consuming, angry, hateful always. The song would weave through him, calm him. The nanites would sing with its rhythm. It had always been there. A thread he had paid no notice to, but that he would have noticed the absence of.

The realisation dawns on him as the ghost plucks out the final chorus, as this moment fades away, the colors bleeding out of the world once again—

Gabriel finishes the song, the last notes sounding like a finality.  
An ending to _something_.  
And suddenly Jack is there, leaning close, eyes commanding him, holding him.  
And this time Gabriel doesn’t shake his head. This time he gives in.  
Jack kisses him for the first time on a balcony in some unnamed town under the light of a full moon during a war.

***

This is it.  
He breathes hard. Heavy.  
Overwatch is with him.  
The Strike Team drop into one of the last remaining omniums. One of the Big 3.  
It is going to take a long time to rebuild the smoking crater of Paris.  
The plan goes to utter shit in less than two minutes.  
Ambush.  
They knew. They knew we were coming, Gabriel—

—Reaper. Reaper is left with the echo of the thought as he takes shelter behind a pile of rubble. Bullets spit at him from every direction and there is the unholy sound of grinding metal in the air. He breathes smoke and rust and blood, and of course, behind it all is the decay. Years old by this point.

He takes stock of the situation.

What _is_ the situation?

He looks at Reyes as he hefts his shotguns—ah, finally he gets the shotguns. They feel good in his hands, his finger itches above the trigger, tapping the metal instead—and directs the silent question at him.

Reyes picks a bit of non-existent dirt out from under his fingernails. He wears a bathrobe and slippers, something Reaper doubts Reyes has ever worn in his life. A hail of bullets sails over Reaper’s shelter and goes straight through Reyes’s head. The ghost blinks, finally noticing Reaper’s stare.

 **“Mmm? Oh, sorry. Did you say something?”** Reyes looks around the battlefield as if just noticing it for the first time. His slippers are pink.

Reaper grits his teeth as his comms crackle to life in his ear. “ _Commander!_ ” Amari yells. He can hear her rifle crack. “ _We need evac now. Lindholm and I are hemmed in. I estimate we can hold out for twenty minutes. After that, we’re fucked._ ”

Reaper feels his stomach drop. So, time was just going to let him deal with a situation in which Overwatch could be destroyed before it even really began.

Unless he stopped that from happening.

Reyes grins. **“Funny how time works, isn’t it?”**

Reaper almost shoots him with his own shotguns. “Situation?” he grits out.

Reyes considers him for a moment, as if he’s waiting for something. A stray thought flits across Reaper’s mind. _Manners_ …

“Are you fucking shitting me, Reyes?” he yells.

“ _What the fuck are you saying, Commander?”_ Amari asks.

 _Shit_. Reaper glares at the ghost.

 _Please_ , he thinks at him.

Reyes smiles and is suddenly dressed in his Blackwatch uniform, including the combat vest and his beanie. He looks just as he had in the datamined photos Reaper had stolen from the hacked Overwatch archives. Determined. Fierce intelligence shining out of his dark eyes.

He looks like a commander.

 **“Alright, since you asked nicely I’ll help you through the situation.”** Reyes squats down beside him. **“There’s two bastion units behind you. Ana and Torb are three blocks over. They won’t be any help until the end of this shitshow when they clear a path for the evac. Payload is currently under heavy fire. We got split up during the drop. Rein is injured and Jack is doing what he can but they won’t hold out for long. Liao will hack the omnium’s blast doors when it’s time, but at the moment it’s pretty much just you, Jack and Rein.”**

Reaper’s comms go off and suddenly Jack’s husky voice is yelling in his ear, “ _Rein is down. Commander, we need evac now! I can’t—_ Jack pauses and he can hear the pulse rifle cracking in the background– _Can’t hold them off. Payload is about to be lost!”_

Reaper stares at Reyes with wide eyes, he can feel his heart speeding up, racing him to an early grave. How the fuck did he manage to survive this mess?

**“Do you trust me?”**

“No.”

Reyes waits.

Reaper sighs.

**“Good. Now do as I say. I’ll guide you through this. We’re going to survive and we’re going to blow those fuckers to hell.”**

Reaper’s eyes almost bug out of his head. Wait. He survived this _and_ blew up an omnium?

**“You betcha. There’s a reason I was Strike Commander.”**

Reaper almost misses the tiny itch of bitterness still clinging to the word ‘was’.

Reyes waves that away. **“Ok, from here you’re going to go left, duck, take three steps and dive forward. Three, two, one, go—**

Reaper doesn’t even have time to protest. He moves. Left. He ducks as a hail of bullets sail over his head, way too close for comfort. Three steps and then he dives behind a surviving concrete wall. He feels the heat of a bullet as it almost clips his calf.

**“Pick up that bit of concrete. They have movement tracking. You’re going to throw it to the right and then you’re going to run straight at them both while one reloads.”**

_This is insane_ , Reaper thinks.

**“This is a battlefield.”**

_And you are a soldier too, along with whatever else you were made to be_ , the thought drifts across the seeming white space of their shared mind.

 **“Go,”** he commands.

Reaper throws the concrete block, then he’s running, faster than he could run in his nanite body. He feels his muscles burn, feels sweat drip down his cheek. Breathes the smoke. Hears the distant booms and cracks of gunfire and bombs. But he concentrates on what’s ahead of him. A Bastion unit reloads while the second one shreds the concrete block. Time seems to slow down as the turret slowly turns, bullets arcing over and towards him—

He gets there first. Reaper jams one shotgun into the weak point of the unit and blows its head off, the other he aims at the reloading unit and fires until it’s systems are shredded.

**“Run. Straight up and over the rubble. Payload is three hundred metres ahead. You’re clear until you hit the fallen horse statue. I’ll let you know when to duck.”**

Reaper goes. He doesn’t look at the rubble around him. Doesn’t see the bodies. Metal and flesh. He just runs. It is soothing in a way, he is in his element.

**“Being told what to do?”**

Reaper stumbles—

 **“Sorry, sorry. Keep going. You’re doing good.”** The ghost says from beside him.

Reaper doesn’t have the time or energy or mind space to process the comment. Processors. That’s what he’s missing. He doesn’t miss the faulty nanites though.

Inconsequential thoughts right now. He jumps over more rubble, sees the horse statue ahead of him. It lies on its side, bronze wounded with bullet holes. The marble step it lies in front of leads up to a broken temple. A church, huge. Rubble lies in front of its shattered doors.

**“Dive right!”**

Reaper does, and comes face to face with an omnic. He jams a shotgun against its chest and empties a clip into it. He goes to fling the shotgun away—

 **“No!”** Reyes shouts, and he remembers that he didn’t have nanites to multiply anymore.

He looks at the shotgun as he runs. _How the fuck does he reload?_

Then he’s jumping over the last piece of rubble and crouch rolls through a broken doorway to come to a stop beside Jack. They are holed up in an ancient lobby of a barely standing apartment building. Reinhardt leans against a wall, jaw clenched as he holds one of his massive hands to staunch the blood seeping from a serious wound in his thigh. It looks shredded. His armour lies in a pile beside him and Jack kneels over the wound with a field kit, pressing some kind of foam into the wound. When he looks up, the utter relief on Jack’s face floors Reaper for a second—

 **“Hey! Hey!”** Reyes clicks his fingers in front of Reaper’s eyes and then tells him how to reload the guns while Jack lays out the helpless situation:

Ambush unit, armour piercing rounds, if they so much as ducked their heads out from cover they were toast. Payload is sitting just outside the omnium, but they had to abandon it to retreat when Reinhardt was hit. Jack’s hands are covered in his comrade’s blood, but he looks calm, like he knew everything would be ok.

Reaper, on the other hand, stares his ghost and gives Reyes the _what-the-fuck-am-I-meant-to-do_ look. He almost wishes for the damaged nanites back, hen he could just go incorporeal and push the payload himself, blow up the omnium, and they could all be home in time for supper.

 **“That’s the plan,”** Reyes says. **“Mind you, I don’t think you would want nanites next to an EMP. Remember what happened when you got electrocuted.”**

 _How could I forget?_ Reaper thinks sardonically. Besides the first moments of his existence, that had been the single most painful experience of his life. Stupid Monkey.

**“He’s a scientist.”**

Reaper’s eye twitches.

 **“Sheesh, calm down,”** Reyes says with a grin and then proceeds to outlines his plan. The rest of team chatter in his ear about the hopeless situation and Jack concentrates on bandaging Reinhardt’s wound.

Reaper’s face falls the longer Reyes speaks.

 _Are you fucking serious?_ he thinks.

 **“Deadly serious,”** says Reyes.

Reaper starts to wonder how this madman made it through fifty-something years of life.

**“I’m very good at what I do. But it all caught up with me in the end.”**

“What are you looking at?” Jack’s eyes flick between Reaper and where ghost Reyes stands. He squints at the invisible ghost, as if that will help him see the apparition that resides in Reaper’s head.

“Nothing,” Reaper says and outlines Reyes’s plan to Reinhardt and Jack.

When he’s done Jack just stares at him for a moment. “Are you fucking serious? Cause that’s not a funny joke, Gabe.”

“Apparently I am,” Reaper says through his gritted teeth. Then he unclips his scramble grenades from his belt. “Here, take mine. You’ll need them.” He hands Jack three of the grenades, debates for a moment on the fourth, but decides to keep it. This was a suicide mission, no matter that Reyes had survived it—somehow—and Reaper would need every advantage he could get.

Jack shakes his head. “This is insane. You’ll die.”

Reaper checks both his shotguns and the ammo casings for a reload. He’d have the opportunity for at least one and since he is going to participate in his own suicide, he would much prefer to go out guns blazing. He looks up at Jack and feels a wry smile curl his lips. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I think we’ve got a shot.”

“You can’t do this—

“You would do well to remember,” Reaper cuts him off, “that I am your commanding officer, Morrison.” He digs through Reinhardt’s abandoned armour until he finds the piece he needs. He holsters one of his shotguns and hefts the massive gauntlet. When he looks up again, Jack frowns at him.

“Are you?” he asks, eyes flicking down to where Reaper taps the ghost’s rhythm above the trigger of his shotgun.

And _finally_ Reaper gets it.

He looks up at his ghost and he laughs. He laughs and laughs until tears threaten to come out of his all-too-human eyes. He shakes his head at Morrison as he wipes them away. “No. I’m not.” He grins and lazily salutes Jack with his shotgun, “be seeing you around Jack.”

“Wait! Wait a second. Gabe. Please,” Jack sounds panicked, but he looks at Reaper and sighs. “I just… I’ll be seeing you too.” He leans forward, and wraps his arms around Reaper, leans his forehead against Reaper’s. “Come back to me,” he whispers.

Reaper feels like time has stopped. Like the great river dragging him forward has become still, and he sinks down, wondering what could possibly be happening. What this feeling is. A warmth building in his chest. A fluttering in his stomach. A heart beating too fast.

He feels alive. And he feels like it can’t possibly last.

Then it’s over. Jack leans back again. The river moves on and takes Reaper with it. He blinks, wondering what could have possibly have got into his eye. He swipes a hand across the wetness and decides that the best course of action would be to move.

Now.

So he does. He springs out of the rubble they were using as cover and sprints to where Reyes points. He almost feels the slow rumble through the ground as all the waiting omnics turn their weapons on him.

The air behind him is filled with bullets, chasing him towards his ghost and he only just makes it behind cover. Chips of marble fly off the pillar as the omnics pelt it from three sides. Reaper flips Reinhardt’s gauntlet around to find the shield activation, all the while waiting for the signal that Morrison is ready to move the wounded knight.

 _"Three…"_ Jack begins the countdown and Reaper takes a breath, readies himself as Reyes keeps a lookout.

_"Two…"_

_"One. Go!"_

Reaper activates the shield and blue hexagons radiate outwards as he spins around and runs straight at the nearest nest of omnics. The shield catches most of the bullets, but a couple come dangerously close to Reaper’s head as he pushes his body up and over the rubble that hides the first nest of omnics. Jack had timed it perfectly because the bastion unit urgently reloads as Reaper hurtles into the two humanoid units beside it, catching their bullets on the massive shield. He jams his shotgun into the bastion’s core and blows it to pieces before whipping the gun around and into each of the humanoids before they can retaliate through the shield.

**“Deactivate the shield for a moment and wait for my mark to go to the payload.”**

Reaper does as the ghost says and watches the shield’s energy structure replenish. He holsters the one spent shotgun and pulls out the other.

**“Go!”**

Reaper sprints up and over the rubble and down to the cleared road that leads right to the entrance of the Paris omnium. The payload sits in the middle of it, just needing the final opening for a push into the ominous metal doors that lead into the massive underground factory. The outside is only three stories tall, a tasteful mix of old and new architecture, steel and stone now so full of bullet holes and blast damage that it blends in nicely with the destruction of the streets around it.

Reaper holds onto the shield as it takes the brunt of the bullets again and manages to duck around the side of the payload and catch one of the units off-guard. The second and third units quickly fall to Reaper’s fury, metal pieces clanging on the streets.

Reyes tells Reaper what he needs to do to activate the payload again as Reinhardt’s shield takes an enormous amount of damage from another nest of omnics. Reaper looks up once in alarm at the cracks in the hardlight structure, before Reyes tells him to concentrate on what he’s doing.

The light on the payload turns from red to green and ‘ARMED’ flashes on the screen.

 _I have a mark on the payload,_ a soft voice says in his ear. _ETA two minutes. I’m hacking the doors now._

Reaper feels an intense relief wash over him and that’s when he realises that the last nest of omnics have stopped shooting at the shield. Reaper looks up and back at where their position should be and finds it empty.

Reyes curses beside him.

Then Reaper spots them, just before they open fire.

Not at him.

At Jack, his back completely exposed as he and Reinhardt try their best to run.

 **“Hey, wait you** **—**

Reaper lets out a wordless yell as he picks up the shield and sprints towards the omnics, full well knowing he won’t get there in time. Before he can think about it, he lifts back his arm and hurls the shield forward, aiming just in front of where the omnics where shooting. It’s a good throw, and it buys him just enough time before the shield is shredded and the omnics turn their hail of fire and death onto him.

He is completely open.

Reaper feels the bullets impact. Two hit the hard armour on his chest, force his breath from his lungs even as another hits his stomach. This one penetrates into his flesh, burning hot fire into his middle. It is closely followed by a second and third impact. Reaper screams as his momentum carries him into the units. He doesn’t know how he does it but he keeps moving, veins filled with lightning as he feels the fire licking at his middle, burning a quick path.

He sinks to his knees the same time the last unit falls to his final shot. Reaper attempts to breathe. Can’t.

He swallows. Tries to differentiate between the voices yelling at him.

 _“Impact in one minute,”_ Liao says. “ _Get out of there Commander_ _—_

 _“Gabe! Report!”_ Morrison yells in his ear. Reaper flinches away from the voice.

 **“Stop putting holes in my body!”** screams the ghost. Reyes yells a string of curses at him as Reaper coughs and burns more fire into his stomach. He clutches the wound, feels the wetness seep through his fingers. He’s too afraid to look at what he’s done.

**“You got shot, you idiot!”**

They both hear it at the same time. Clanking metal. Reaper’s heart goes cold, there are more of them.

 _“Commander! Ten units heading your way. Get out now!”_ Amari screams in his ear.

“Can’t,” Reaper all but whispers back.

This was it. Reaper can’t move. The body wouldn’t let him. It almost hurt worse than the nanites. At least the nanites had done what he’d asked though. Reaper just feels a horrified numbness spreading through his mind as the clanking gets louder and louder.

Then the ghost’s face is in front of his own. Reaper stares into Reyes’s deep, brown eyes, sees his own terror reflected in their calm depths.

 **“Do you trust me,”** Reyes says quietly.

Reaper opens his mouth to speak and coughs. He tastes metal. Iron. Metallic and gummy. He spits and stares at the red on the grey rubble. Gingerly, Reaper removes his hand from where he clutches the wound. He almost heaves up his stomach, or is that it coming out of the wound? Reaper doesn’t know. Tries to hold himself together. But he can’t. Oh god he can’t. He’s not in control.

 **“Reaper. Do you trust me?”** he repeats. He doesn’t yell, just says it with an intensity that demands the whole of Reaper’s attention. Somehow it tells him that _everything will be ok_.

“I…” Reaper coughs again. _No,_ he thinks.

The ghost waits.

“Yes,” he grits out. What choice does he have?

**“Give me control.”**

Reaper feels the world drop away. Narrow to this moment. Where a dead man asks for his body back. Reaper slowly shakes his head. _No. Not that,_ he tells his ghost. _It’s not yours any more._

**“Reaper. We can end this here. We can die. You can never exist. Or you can give. It. Back. And I will get us out of here.”**

Reaper feels himself spiralling. It hurts. It hurts and he’s bleeding all over the rubble. His heart is beating too fast. And there’s pain. He can’t control it.

He hears the omnics behind him. Getting closer.

He can’t—

**“I can help you. You just have to give it up for a moment.”**

He can’t.

But it _hurts_.

And for once the pain won’t just go into the little cage in his head. That cage doesn’t exist anymore. Too full of other things. Emotions. Memories…

Hope?

What is he hopeful for?

He looks up into Gabriel Reyes’s eyes and he wants to laugh.

Wants to punch the ghost.

Wants to stop dying in the middle of the omnic crisis—

So… _Ah. Right_.

So that he can see Jack again.

So that he can live.

“Help me,” he whispers.

Reyes smiles in understanding. He holds out a hand as if to offer to pull Reaper up, and Reaper reaches up and grasps it—

For a moment, just a moment, he is Gabriel.  
His life stretches out in front of him and behind.  
Woven with the threads of the millions of people he has saved.  
And those he has doomed.  
He sees the inevitable conclusion of it all and wants to rail against it, fight, bleed, burn, love.  
He wants to live again.

—Reaper’s ghost stumbles backwards from Gabriel as he grunts in pain on the ground. But he’s also looking through Gabriel’s eyes, feeling _his_ pain as he hisses each breath through his teeth.

_God, he feels alive again. It has been too long._

Reaper tries to move an arm and finds he can’t. But that’s ok, because Gabriel moves it for him. Picks up his remaining scramble grenade and pops the pin, his fingers slick with blood.

Five.

Gabriel pushes up from the rubble, using his adrenaline. Using his beating heart. Heaving lungs. Feeling the fire in his belly and revelling in it. _Alive_.

Four.

He stands and tosses the grenade.

Three.

Metal clunks behind him and he spins to face it, shotgun up and ready.

Two.

He pulls the trigger and the gun roars, kicking back in his hand and juddering down his damaged body. An intake of breath when the pain spikes and he captures it, because now it is _his_ pain. Gabriel’s waited too long for this. He switches targets as the omnic falls backwards.

One.

There’s a flash and he hears grinding metal, everything electrical in a ten-metre radius should be temporarily disabled. Gabriel darts from one omnic to the next, jamming the guns into their cores and pulling the triggers. Last, come the two Bastions and Gabriel blows them to pieces just as they begin to jerk their turrets around to face him.

His comms come crackling back to life and Jack screams into his ear, telling him to get out now, omnics are incoming. Too many to count. The EMP is about to blow. Gabriel radios his location calmly as he holsters one of his shotguns and holds his guts inside his body with the spare hand.

Reaper can hear omnics getting closer, running for safety, away from the EMP blast. They stream out of the omnium doors, coming right at them both. A stampede. Chaos.

The EMP would blow their communications and anything with an electric signal in its radius. Gabriel laughs as the omnics divert around him, not bothering to shoot him in their panic to get to safety. He looks up at the looming omnium, knowing most of it is underground, but hating it all the same. Reaper feels that hate. Gabriel looks at an omnic as it passes him and he sighs. And Reaper feels this too. Heavy. Tired.

Gabriel holsters his second gun and lifts his hand to flip off the omnium. _Guess who lives again, motherfuckers_ —

There’s a pop, just on the edge of hearing. Then sound catches up as a wave ripples through the air, bringing with it a boom. As it passes him, his comm goes dead and then it’s just silence for a moment as the omnic stream freezes.

Then they fall. Metal shells empty of any life, completely wiped away by the electrical blast. He looks at the bodies around him and sighs.

He closes his eyes. When he opens them again, the black takes a little too long to fade.

Gabriel falls.

Reaper feels it. He feels everything. The darkness closing in as Gabriel sinks to his knees. The sadness. Deep. Mournful. For both sides. The _pain._

The pain most of all. Reaper feels it. Every inch.

 **“Hey,”** Reaper tries to keep him awake. Stands in front of his body and clutches onto Gabriel. **“Stay with me,”** he says. Gabriel wouldn’t die now… would he?

No, he couldn’t.

**“Live, you idiot. You have to live so that I do.”**

_Selfish._ Gabriel’s thought flits across Reaper’s ghostly form.

 **“Maybe I am.”** _Maybe that’s all I ever was._

 _Or maybe you’re lying to yourself._ Gabriel laughs and spits blood onto the broken street.

The blackness invades Reaper’s vision and he sways as Gabriel slumps forward. Everything hurts. Reaper _feels_ it, even though he can’t control it.

Reaper catches him, tries to hold him in his arms. _Pull yourself together_ , he thinks.

Gabriel tries not to laugh as he clutches his stomach. _I’m trying._

Reaper can’t help it. His shoulders shake as the blackness closes in and he laughs his way into the dark.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoooweeee. This was one of my favourite sequences to write. I hope it turned out alright!
> 
> This chapter has some incredible art by [Liripip!](http://liripip.tumblr.com/). Which unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I can't get to embed into the fic (I'm gonna try again tomorrow at a more reasonable hour). But seriously, [go check it out on their tumblr, it's super great!](http://liripip.tumblr.com/post/163325302757/liripip-for-the-r76-big-bang-more-specifically)  
> I also can't thank Liripip enough for their help during the early editing stages. Your kind comments kept me going :3
> 
> I’m always up to meet people and chat! You can find me at [Twitter](https://twitter.com/Jakallx) and [tumblr](http://jakallx.tumblr.com/)


	5. The Leader Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys like slumber parties!   
> Thank you for all your comments btw, they keep me going as I edit this monster of a fic _(ツ 」∠ )_

_The say time always heals_   
_But time doesn’t heal without you_   
_I know how it feels_   
_but nothing feels real without you_   
_Welcome to the world we wander on_   
_I’ll go on._   
_Sinking into time, will it ever be done_   
_I’ll go on._

                               -Boo Seeka. _Brooklyn._

 

“Hey.”

Reaper floats in black. Numb. There is no pain. Will he ever get used to that?

“Hey. Wake up. I’m bored.”

The voice is startlingly close face and he snaps his open his eyes in surprise. Gabriel’s old face takes up the entirety of his vision, looking just as he had before he died. The scars that streak his skin are ancient by this point and he has a couple of grey hairs in his beard. Not enough to call it salt and pepper, but that was where it was headed.

The face frowns. “Who are you calling ancient?”

Reaper blinks and flinches backwards, away from the ghost.

“Yo, chill. I’m not going to do anything.”

That’s not reassuring at all. He stares out at the dark void that surrounds them both, desperately trying to understand what is happening and why he is here. Then the memories of the last fall into time hit him all at once like the bullets he took to his own guts.

Shit. Is this it?

Is he dead?

“Nope,” says Gabriel. He floats up and crosses his arms with a smug grin, looking for all the world as though he is glad Reaper isn’t dead.

All around them is black. Not unlike that white abyss that gobbles them up every time they fall through Gabriel’s life, but somehow Reaper got the impression that this black space was much more like limbo. A kind of suspension. And they were trapped there.

“Bingo,” says Gabriel pointing at him and finger-gunning. He seems to realise what he’s doing after a moment and stops, muttering something about a dumb cowboy and his habits. “I’m unconscious. One of those induced comas while they regrow part of my stomach and liver.”

“Right,” Reaper says slowly. “And why did you wake _me_ up?” He could have just drifted in sweet painless silence for a while.

“Because I’m bored,” Gabriel repeats. “And, since time probably isn’t going to be so kind as to dump us somewhere else just yet, we’re gonna be here a while. I thought we could have us a little slumber party.”

Abruptly there’s an up and a down and Reaper is unceremoniously dumped on his ass while Gabriel floats down to land gently beside him.

_Like an angel,_ the stray thought flits across his mind and above him Gabriel smiles.

“I try,” he says, striking a pose.

_Fuck you_ , Reaper thinks as hard as he can. But Gabriel just laughs at that too and offers a hand out to him. Reaper frowns at the unwavering hand, hesitating for a bare moment before reaching out and taking it, letting Gabriel pull him up.

Then he realises what Gabriel had said. Did he hear is right? “Slumber party?”

“Hell yeah, you heard right. It’s slumber party time,” Gabriel clicks his fingers, and he’s back in his bathrobe and pink slippers.

“I… what?” Reaper stares at him.

“Well, since neither of us went through the teenage girl part of my life I wish I had, I figure that we could do it now. It is _literally_ a slumber party.” He conjures up a bowl of popcorn and a movie with the title _Ten Things I Hate About You_.

Despite himself, Reaper rolls his eyes. “I’ve already seen that one.” Sombra had made him watch it during a particularly bad nanite storm. She had told him it would take his mind off things.

“I know,” says Gabriel. He tips backwards on his heels, but just as he falls, there’s abruptly a couch beneath him and he sprawls onto its beaten-up cushions. “It’s also one of my favourites. I think I remember the whole thing.” He pats the cushion next to him in invitation.

Reaper drags a hand down his face frowning when he is met by the hard carbon of his mask. He looks at his hands. They definitely weren’t Gabriel’s hands, they looked more like floating ash within a glass container. Reaper is reminded of a snow globe he had once seen abandoned on the mantelpiece of one of Talon’s safehouses. In a moment of curiosity, he had picked it up, disturbing the ‘snow’ within. He watches the eddies of his own black snow now, swirling round and round, just like the nanites but more… contained.

Gabriel nods at him encouragingly and Reaper reluctantly sits on the other side of the black couch in this black place. He chews the inside of his cheek and draws his knees up to his stomach. He feels hollow, insubstantial. Adrift. He feels himself being dragged out, as if caught in a riptide, towards a wave on the horizon.

“You felt everything,” Reaper whispers. _You’ve always felt it_. He can almost see the wave above him as he realises these silent truthes. _Always been there. You sat in the back of my head for five years and felt every instance of pain with me_.

Gabriel takes a breath, holds it and then lets it out slowly. “Yes.”

The word is simple. Its meaning is not.

Reaper’s not-hands shake, black flakes trembling within. He clenches them in an attempt to steady himself. Above him the wave crests and he looks up at it in quiet horror.

Because he remembers the songs. The music that had always been there for him. When the pain was overwhelming, or the nanites swarmed, or he had to kill and murder and destroy and—

The music was always there for him.

“You sang to me,” Reaper says dully. _That’s_ why he knew that song. The one Gabriel had played for Jack. Had sang to him long ago.

Gabriel doesn’t move closer, doesn’t close that gap between them. Instead he fixes Reaper with his gaze, the quiet intensity, a purposefulness that Reaper is slowly realising inhabits every single one of Gabriel’s movements.

Gabriel doesn’t say anything. But Reaper knows. He _knows_.

The wave peaks.

Crashes.

Reaper drowns in it. The ocean drags him down, away from everything he thought he knew about himself. He is a hollow shell. He had nothing left. No, that’s not true. Because there, in the bottom of his empty self, is a feeling.

Guilt.

Shame.

Reaper shatters. A ghost sang to him. For years. Kept him sane when he felt himself falling apart. The nanites would hum with music he had never heard before, couldn’t possibly have heard, but knew the words to anyway. He had silenced it all. Taken strength when it was freely given and caged a ghost until he needed it again.

But the ghost had never stopped singing.

Like he had actually _cared_.

Reaper feels a hand on his shoulder. He looks up to see Gabriel, dark eyes close.

The hand steadies him. Lets him know _something_ as he desperately tries to tread water even as he drowns in it. Where was his resolve?

“Why?” Reaper asks. Croaks out from a throat that feels as shredded and torn as his insides.

“Because I could feel it.”

_The pain._

“Mmhmm, yeah. That sucked.”

“Why didn’t you… take control?” Reaper says slowly.

Gabriel looks away, chews on his bottom lip as if he is deciding whether or not to answer. Eventually, he shrugs and fixes Reaper with honest eyes, “because I couldn’t.”

Reaper tries to swallow the lump in his throat. Even without a body, in Gabriel’s unconscious mind, trapped in time, he _feels._ And that almost hurts more than the nanites.

“I _died_ ,” continues Gabriel. “I thought I was gone. In hell for what I had done. There was nothing left but pain and screaming and a million billion pieces of myself trying to eat each other.”

“So you let me take it?”

“No.” Gabriel’s answer is like a whip crack. The force of it makes Reaper flinch. “You took it regardless of what I did. You did not ask. You stole it. You used me.”

He had heard the singing. Had known. Should have known, but he had never questioned it, never questioned himself.

“I’m…” Reaper’s voice quakes as the shame washes over him again. He had known. Of course he had. Five long years he had known that the ghost was still alive, and he had silenced him.

“I’m sorry,” Reaper whispers. How can you be sorry for something that immense? _I’m sorry for hearing but never listening._

_I’m sorry for taking everything._

“But will you give it back?”

Reaper snaps his head up to look at the ghost. Every instinct he has screams _NO_. Of course not. Gabriel had died. The body was his now.

Gabriel narrows his eyes.

“I don’t know.” Reaper supposes that is the truth. For now.

The ghost sighs and Reaper gets the impression that he is disappointed in him. That grates on him a little. Like he could have known that Gabriel’s soul or whatever was actually still clinging to his pitiful excuse for a body. He was programmed to do a job and he had done it—

“You were programmed with artificial intelligence. The least you could have done was _used_ that intelligence,” Gabriel says savagely.

“I…” Reaper feels wrung out and he pulls himself back from Gabriel. Away from the dead man. Cowering in his shame at the opposite end of the couch. “What do you want from me?”

That pulls Gabriel up short. The old soldier chews his lip for a moment, considering Reaper, judging him is what it felt like. Gabriel opens his mouth, but changes his mind and sighs out that breath.

“I suppose, at this point in time, I want you to watch this dumbass movie with me,” Gabriel says quietly. He offers the bowl, “popcorn?” In front of them a holoscreen pops up and beginning credits for the movie starts to roll.

_I don’t give a damn ‘bout my bad reputation!_ Blares from all around them.

Reaper flinches at the sudden noise and eyes the bowl suspiciously. He doesn’t even know if he can eat anymore, doesn’t want to face what is underneath the mask just yet. “How do you do that?” He nods towards Gabriel’s imaginary popcorn.

Gabriel shrugs and stuffs another handful of popcorn into his mouth. “I have a very active imagination. Didn’t have much else to do but imagine shit going differently for five years.” He swallows the popcorn. “Well, if you don’t want food, why not, I don’t know, some kind of animal or something? Start small.”

Reaper tilts his head to the side and considers for a moment. Then he imagines her. Right at the beginning when he had been smoke and ash trying and failing to teach himself to hold together he had drifted on the wind for a time, not particularly caring where he would end up. Eventually, he came to rest as an inky puddle at the base of a tree in a run-down suburb. He had just hung there like an angry storm cloud. Every so often he would make himself some eyes—he could manage that well enough—to see how much time had passed. The nanites had hummed with a quiet song, melancholic. He doesn’t remember much of it. He hadn’t been listening to himself back then, but eventually he had made his eyes for the seventh time and there, above him, was an owl. Pale white and with eyes of black ink, she had tilted her head at this curiosity below her.

Reaper thinks of her now. _Imagines_ her. The way she had questioned him—hadn’t looked at him with revulsion, or contempt, or malice—just an innocent curiosity. And suddenly he’s holding her in his arms. Her claws dig into his tracksuit pants but he doesn’t feel pain. Won’t feel pain in this place. He’s glad.

He hesitantly puts a hand out and strokes her feathers, marvelling a little when she leans into his touch and ruffles her feathers contentedly.

Reaper looks over at Gabriel after he realises that the ghost hasn’t said anything in a while. Gabriel appears to be concentrating on the movie, but the corners of his mouth twitch up occasionally. He shoves a handful of popcorn in his mouth, shoulders shaking, when the owl ruffles her feathers and jumps up to perch herself on Reaper’s head.

Reaper huffs out a breath and decides to ignore him and the owl, instead turning his attention to the movie. Gabriel has a freakish photographic memory because Reaper couldn’t think of any details he has missed.

When Sombra had forced him and Widowmaker to watch it, she had ended up lying all over them both while they had pretended not to notice or care.

Now Gabriel was doing the same.

He’s abandoned the popcorn bowl and has his legs over one of the armrests while he leans against Reaper, pushing him right up against his own armrest.

“Why don’t you make the couch bigger?” Reaper eventually grits out.

Gabriel just tilts his head back and looks up at Reaper with a wry smile. “And where would the fun of that be? Getting all up in your personal space is one of my favourite past times.”

Reaper doesn’t say anything, just feels the passing eddies of guilt threaten to pull him back down again.

Gabriel’s smile widens to a grin and he makes himself more comfortable on Reaper’s not-body. They watch the rest of the nineties teen movie together. Gabriel mutters occasional commentary about how much the two remakes suck and that the original is the best, but mostly he gets up in arms about the late nineties fashion. Eventually the credits roll, all the names blurred.

“Yeah, as much as I believe giving artists credit is important,” Gabriel mutters as he stretches out. One of his arms almost hits the owl on top of Reaper’s head and she puffs up her feathers indignantly, but he pays her no mind. “I’m pretty sure all these people are dead by now.”

“How do you even remember the entire movie,” Reaper mutters. Technically he should be able to remember it too, but in this place…he doesn’t. Every part of him seems vague. _That’s probably how it’s always been_ , he thinks bitterly.

“I remember plenty of things. Want to watch another movie? I got the first two Frozen movies memorised, and I know the soundtracks for the other five off by heart.”

“Frozen?” Reaper doesn’t think he’s seen those ones.

“Yeah, c’mon, _Let it go, let it goooo,_ ” Gabriel sings a little and Reaper goes rigid, a cold shiver running down his spine.

“That song.” Reaper whispers. Oh no. Not _that_ song. “ _You_ -you sang that for a _week_ straight.” He remembers it now. His nanites hadn’t shut up and he had eventually found himself humming along during a particularly distasteful Talon mission. Widowmaker had given him shit for it.

“Oh, did I? I can’t possibly think of a reason I would have wanted to hum children’s songs about setting yourself free while being forced to watch an AI pilot my dead body on terrorist missions.” Gabriel’s voice is like steel by the end, sharp, it cuts deep.

Reaper doesn’t know what to say. Apologising doesn’t seem like it will ever be enough.

“It won’t.” Gabriel pushes himself up and leans back over to his side of the couch. He considers Reaper for a moment, tapping his finger against his jaw. A familiar rhythm. “Well,” he says eventually, “what do you want to do then?”

Reaper shrugs and looks down at his hands. What did he want to do?

Maybe…

Maybe he should try listening?

“Oh?” Gabriel leans forward.

“Can you stop that?” he snarls, annoyed by how _much_ Gabriel listens to him.

“No.” The ghost’s expression remains neutral and Reaper sighs.

It’s his fault. All his fault…

But. He’s being serious. “Can we talk?” he asks.

Gabriel isn’t wearing the bathrobe anymore, instead he’s in a large blue hoodie, Overwatch patches sewn into the arms. It doesn’t look like something he would normally wear, and he either doesn’t notice he’s wearing it, or doesn’t care to comment.

“What do you want to talk about?”

Reaper curls his arms around his legs, holding himself in, shutting himself out. “You, I suppose.”

“And what about me do you want to know?”

_Everything._

Reaper shakes his head trying to figure that one out. Even after living through half of Gabriel’s life, he still didn’t know who he _was_.

Is.

Reaper opens his mouth and decides to ask about the start. “Your… your mother—

Gabriel’s eyebrows shoot up and Reaper hears his sharp intake of breath.

“Sorry. I-I won’t ask if you don’t want me to.” Reaper had felt what it had done to him. He shivers at the memory.

Gabriel waves it away, “you already witnessed a bunch of my childhood. May as well just ask about all the stuff you missed.”

“How… did she die?” Reaper tries to say it quietly, gently.

The grimace that pulls down Gabriel’s face is painful to watch. Reaper even thinks he feels a touch of it. Almost like a phantom limb, the shadow of the pit come to haunt him again.

“Hit and run,” Gabriel says it just as quietly. “Drunk driver. I used to dream of her lying there sometimes. In the middle of the street. In the dark. Cold and abandoned.” He sighs and covers his eyes with a hand. “That was a _long_ time ago. I never thought I would see her face again. I’m glad I did.”

Reaper remembers the child. And the woman, her smile. That hand on his shoulder. He swallows and blinks rapidly, wondering at the hollow scratching in his throat.

They are both quiet for a moment. “Your sister?” Reaper asks eventually. The little girl, and later the woman who had squeezed his hand.

“Mia?” Gabriel looks up and grins. “Mia’s alive.” His smile slips a little. “Well, I actually don’t know what happened to her after Zurich. In the two years leading up to it I hadn’t seen her. Tried to keep her out of anything connected to Overwatch. Wiped most of myself and my connections from the Blackwatch archives the second I knew there was a chance we were compromised.”

“What about _her_ though? What was she like?” Reaper is curious. She had said something about a ceremony during one of the flashes, and somehow, she had recognised him.

“She always was the more perceptive of the two of us. If she had been a soldier, she would have been the greatest commander of Overwatch the world had ever seen. She had other dreams though,” Gabriel smiles at the memories. “She went on to get that degree. Finished it just before the crisis hit, worked in the refugee camps during the crisis and after became the engineer she always dreamed of. Helped rebuild most of Los Angeles. The ceremony…”

Gabriel laughs at that and suddenly Reaper—

***

Gabriel walks his sister down the aisle, the biggest grin in the world plastered on his face.  
It was nothing compared to hers though. She looks radiant.  
And she laughs and kisses him on the cheek when they make it to the alter.  
“You’re next,” she whispers in his ear. Then she meets her fiancé and her attention is wholly focused on them.  
Gabriel looks out at the crowd of faces in the little church. He can pick out the members of Overwatch immediately. They are all excessively eccentric.  
He finds the face he’s looking for. The shock of blonde hair sticks out in the crowd and the blue eyes are piercing, even from all the way up here.  
The ceremony is almost over.   
Mia turns around and gets ready to toss her bouquet of flowers.  
He can see Reinhardt lift Jack and push him bodily into the fray of people waiting behind Mia’s back.  
She throws the bouquet, has a good arm as it sails into the back of the crowd. A heavily muscled arm snatches it out of the air before it can hit the woman standing beside him in the face.  
Jack looks at the bouquet of flowers in his hand. His face steadily growing redder and redder while the wedding guests around him scream and laugh and pat him on the back.  
Then his eyes flick up and they find Gabriel.  
And all he can think is, _yes. You bet I’m going to marry you, asshole._

***

Reaper snorts. “Really?”

“And I did,” Gabriel says smugly. “It took me a while though. We were together, but life was busy.”

Reaper does the maths. That memory must have happened not long after this moment of time they were currently trapped in. He looks around at the black void. His… Gabriel’s unconscious mind.

“Yeah, now I think on it, I can’t believe how long it took either of us to make a move. I’d kissed him on that balcony, but we didn’t really mention it because we both had this kind of embarrassed bromance going on. Didn’t want to ruin what we had. Besides, we had work to do.” His eyes go distant for a moment, but no more memories show up—

Reaper feels a warmth drift across the void—

“Mia’s wedding was the first time we danced though. And I suppose from that moment, we inseparable for a long, long time.”

“Even though you were bitter he was made Strike Commander instead of you?”

Gabriel rolls his eyes. “Why does everyone think that? You’ve been watching too many fucking newsreels.”

Reaper shrugs. “Must have hurt though. You lead Overwatch until the end of the crisis. You saved the world.”

“Ok. Yes. I suppose there was bitterness there, but I was never going to settle for being a puppet. That’s all the UN wanted. Adawe took me aside the evening before they forced me to stand down and told it to me straight. She said she had fought for me, but in the end, had been voted out. It wasn’t _just_ the fact that they didn’t think I would be a good little puppet. A puppet didn’t save their asses during the crisis and apparently they thought I wasn’t about to let some suits tie strings to my arms just to get some fucking recognition. They were right, but there were other factors at play too. Ones that never really go away, no matter how progressive you think the world is,” his nostrils flare and he grimaces. “In the end though, she told me that the Blackwatch Commander position was where I could do the most good. Be the most help in rebuilding the world. So I decided to take it.”

He sighs. “I didn’t know they were going to make Jack commander though. I mean, other than Amari, he was the next best option. They asked her but she refused. She told me once that despite the good we were doing in the world, there would never truly be peace for us. Old soldiers never really stop being soldiers, and without a war… I don’t think she wanted to be complicit in making her own. So they chose Jack… that hurt a little more than I would have liked it to. He was apologetic about it, which was good, but I didn’t want his pity. Told him not to be sorry, just to be better. He did a good job. It was a thankless job,” he pauses and snorts. “Well, besides that fuck-ass huge statue they gave him. But the job also tore us apart. I don’t know… it was so good for so many years. We did so much good. Made a better world together…but in the end,” Gabriel is rambling now, lost in his memories. “We’re both to blame for what happened.”

He takes a deep breath. “Anyway, that stuff’s kind of depressing, and time is probably going to drag us through it. Anything else you want to know?”

Reaper swallows, and then asks the question he’s been chewing over but hadn’t thought aloud the entire conversation. “When… did you… realise you loved Jack?”

Gabriel’s eyes nearly bug out of his face and he slowly breaks into a grin. Then he throws back his head and laughs. Reaper can feel whatever the approximation of his face is burning. He shouldn’t feel that. He didn’t have a face.

“Oh honey, now you’re getting into the slumber party spirit. But if you’re going to ask me that, then I get to ask something too. Like truth or dare. But we’ll just do truths.”

Reaper grinds his teeth. Doesn’t Gabriel know everything about him already?

“Only the things you know about yourself,” the ghost says mysteriously.

Reaper is quiet for a moment. But the curiosity doesn’t go away. “Fine,” he eventually grates out.

“When did I fall in love with him?” Gabriel chews it over for a little bit. “I don’t really know. There’s a million different moments you fall in love with someone. I don’t think it happens all at once. I hated his guts at the start of SEP, but yeah, you know, he sure is… was persistent. He became the best friend I ever had, but we couldn’t start anything while the world fell apart around us. Would have been damaging for our careers.” Gabriel can’t sit still. He stands up and walks around the back of the couch. Picks up Reaper’s imaginary owl from her perch and scratches her head while he paces back and forth.

“Hang on, I have a better idea. Why don’t I show you?”

“Show me?”

“Yeah, we should watch some of the good shit time decided to pass us by. Sure, the bacon sharing was fun. But you missed the SEP hot sauce competition, and I’m pretty sure since time has been a little bitch that it’s probably going to skip a lot of the good stuff in the later years. Admittedly, there’s less of it, but we should still have some fun.”

Reaper shrugs, then a thought hits him and he looks sharply at Gabriel, opening his mouth—

“Oh my god, no,” Gabriel snorts. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep it PG for you.” He pauses a moment before he mutters something that sounds like, “god forbid time actually does dump us into one of those memories. Because, fair warning, there’s a lot of them.”

Reaper hardly felt reassured, but at the same time he is curious. He tries not to examine the growing feeling of excitement at the thought of seeing different memories of Jack, and possibly ones where he or Gabriel hadn’t been so antisocial. Gabriel raises an eyebrow at him and Reaper sighs. “Fine, let’s watch the memories.”

The ghost grins and—

***

The twenty soldiers gathered around the table in the cafeteria shout at each other, catcalling and crowding together trying to get the best view of the three contestants. Each one has a full bottle of ‘The Reaper’s Eazin’ Squeezin’ Hot Sauce’ in front of them.  
BANNED IN OVER FIFTY COUNTRIES is plastered in curly red letters on the side of each bottle and accompanied by a cartoon man giving the thumbs up as if that fact is a charming endorsement.  
Jack sits in the middle chair, shoulders relaxed as he waits for the other two contestants to psych themselves up. Gabriel stands behind Jack’s chair, looks down at his messy blonde hair. He slowly leans over to whisper in Jack’s ear.   
“You sure about this?” he asks with a grin. It widens when Jack shivers—he actually _shivers_ —at how close he is.   
He is caught off guard when Jack leans back in his chair so that his lips are at Gabriel’s ear and whispers, “will you grieve over my flaming corpse if I don’t make it?”  
Gabriel’s smile drops. “Don’t joke about that shit,” he says a little too fast. _Shit, play it cool. Play it cool._ He doesn’t like the way Jack’s neck distracts him when it’s stretched out like that, or the way his eyes follow its curve down to Jack’s chest. Or the way his breath hitches when Jack grins at him, like he is now.   
“Aw, Gabe, I always knew your hardass demeanor really is just hiding a big ol’ softy who would cry if your best friend died of hot sauce poisoning.”  
“We’re not best friend—  
His blustering is drowned out by Carmen—the chief organiser of this little suicidal competition and Martinez’s partner—beating a cup on the table and yelling, “all right all right. Shut the fuck up and let’s get this show on the road. Betting is now closed.”   
There’s a flurry of frantic movements and Gabriel sees a couple of soldiers exchanging last minute coupon bits and cigarettes.   
“Now the rules go like this—  
“Did you bet on me?” Jack asks under his breath.  
Gabriel leaves it perhaps a touch too long before replies, “‘course I did.”   
Jack nods all the same though, and looks straight ahead. His muscles tense up as he goes into battle-mode, massive shoulders rippling underneath the tight black SEP shirt and making Gabriel’s train of thought derail into a fiery wreck.  
_What was it again?  
Oh, right. This white boy didn’t stand a chance._ Martinez and Smith were going to wipe the floor with Jack, and Gabriel was going to have to suffer through the rest of SEP in humiliation.  
He didn’t even know why Jack had risen to Martinez’s challenge in the first place. Or how she managed to acquire three bottles of hot sauce. Or why they were using it for a stupid competition when they could actually use it for its intended purpose and make the SEP dinners somewhat edible.   
—we all clear on that?” Carmen yells.  
“HOOAH!” Yell the rest of them.  
“Ok! Three. Two. One—  
All three contestants pick up their bottles and begin to upend the contents into their mouths.  
Several seconds pass in silence.  
Gabriel can’t rip his eyes away from the bobbing of Jack’s adam’s apple and the supine curve of his neck—  
Smith caves. Drops the bottle of half-finished sauce on the table and clutches his throat as he lets out a strangled gurgle. His face goes purple and the soldiers behind him scurry out of the way as he scrapes his chair backwards and rushes out of the cafeteria followed by the groans of all the idiots who had bet on him.  
Jack and Martinez keep going.  
The room is silent. A horrified silence. In awe of these two insane creatures.  
Martinez’s eyes dart over to Jack, getting wider and wider as he cooly eyes her back and gives her a tiny shrug.  
Cocky bastard.  
And now she’s struggling. Gabriel can see her trembling.  
Her face break out in a sweat.  
She gasps, slams her three-quarters empty bottle onto the table and coughs before letting out a tiny scream of frustration directed at Jack.  
Jack pays her no mind and finishes his bottle, even going so far as to tap it a couple of times to get the dregs out.  
Un-fucking-believable.   
Martinez and everyone else in the room thinks so too as she backs away from him, breathing hard and clutching her stomach. “You’re a fuckin’ monster, Morrison. How? _How?!”  
_ Jack just shrugs. “Guess I can handle the heat better than you,” he says slyly while looking back at Gabriel out of the corner of his eye.  
Gabriel feels himself blush, tells himself to _stop it_ , because Jack is his... friend, even if Gabriel is still in denial of that fact.  
His thoughts do nothing to temper the heat in his face, or the creeping realisation that he might actually _like_ Jack Morrison—

***

Gabriel rolls his eyes at Reaper. “Honestly, it’s almost embarrassing to look back on those early days and realise just how much denial I was in.”

“But he liked you from the start?” Reaper asks. Jack had clung to _him_ like a virus during the parts of SEP he had lived through.

Gabriel snorts. “I don’t know whether he liked me _right_ from the start, but he’s a particular breed of stubborn asshole that latches onto a person and doesn’t let go until they make that person realise they’re the one being a stubborn asshole.” Gabriel sighs and shakes his head. “Anyway, he won the hot sauce competition and gained a kind of horrified respect from everyone. He told me later that SEP managed to enhance literally everything except his taste buds, which are, to this day, almost non-existent. His excuse is that he ate nothing but corn for eighteen years of his life.”

“How does eating corn make you not taste anything?” Reaper knows that being dead means you can’t taste anything but ash and fire. He wonders if eating corn for eighteen years is some kind of equivalent.

“I have no idea. But I’m not about to complain about the fact. Jack would eat anything, which was actually pretty useful during the rationing periods of the crisis. He would trade ration packs with everyone until he was left with the shittiest one.” Gabriel smiles at the memory, “he always was just a little bit unbelievable. Never complained, and he always seemed to bring people together, no matter how much they wanted to hate each other.” Gabriel shrugs, “he was a good choice for Strike Commander during peace time. Well, up until the point it killed the both of us at least.”

Reaper doesn’t really know what to say. What do you say to a man who was killed by his own husband?

“His complacency, and my own stubbornness killed me,” Gabriel says. “Anyway, that’s some depressing shit, and something we’re more than likely going to have to live through. Let’s lighten the mood and relive that time Jack and I danced at the UN’s peace celebration at the end of the Crisis and then made out in the gardens.”

Before Reaper can open his mouth to reply—

***

“Wanna dance?” Jack’s face appears in front of his own. His eyes sparkle with a mischievous glint before he bows low and offers his hand with much pomp and theatrics.  
Gabriel takes a moment to appreciate the way Jack’s suit jacket stretches over his broad back. His shoulders are tensed up though and his hand is steady, which just tells Gabriel that Jack is nervous. Behind him, the UN’s Peace Celebration is in full swing, humans and omnics twirling together around the dancefloor in the magnificent high-ceilinged ballroom. Jack looks up when Gabriel doesn’t say anything.  
“They’re watching us,” says Gabriel. It’s not a refusal, just a statement of fact.  
Jack grins at him. “So? War’s over. Now is the time for dancing.”   
Gabriel can’t argue with that. Nor can he argue with the way his heart quickens at the thought of holding Jack, so he tosses back the drink he is holding, places his glass on a passing waiter’s tray, and lets Jack lead him out onto the dance floor.  
Jack’s hand is warm and he keeps darting tiny looks back at Gabriel, as if making sure he is still there, following him. Each time their eyes meet Gabriel can’t help but be floored by Jack’s smile, unburdened by an impending mission which might be their last. In a way, they were free from it now.  
So why does he feel so lost?  
Jack must see the conflict in his eyes because when he finally pulls Gabriel close, he whispers, “what is it?”  
Gabriel shrugs, tries to bury the feeling and just enjoy this simple moment they share together.   
Jack doesn’t press him and instead lets Gabriel melt further into his embrace. He puts his head into Jack’s shoulder and they sway like that for a few minutes. It was comforting to just be held for once, to not worry about dying the next day, to be himself and love who he wants to.  
Gabriel blinks. He feels his entire mind shudder to a halt as he examines that errant thought.  
Well. He hadn’t exactly prepared for that kind of revelation tonight.  
Jack sways to a stop and Gabriel looks up at him.   
“Are you ok?” Jack asks quietly.  
The other dancers swirl like a lazy current around their tiny island of stillness. Gabriel finds himself breathing faster, feels like he might get swept up in the rising tide and dragged away from Jack if he isn’t careful, if he doesn’t cling on.  
“Need some air,” he manages to mutter as he tries to deal with the cascade of thoughts and feelings hitting him at once. “And a drink,” he tacks on after. Is he panicking?  
Jack frowns in concern and puts an arm around him. Parts the guests like the sea as he makes a beeline towards one of the doors that leads out to the balcony.   
They pass out of the bright lights and into the gardens, immaculate hedges border the path that couples wonder down. The low din from the ballroom behind them fades as Jack pulls him forward, keeps him going. Every time they pass under a circle of light cast by the lamps that border the path Gabriel watches the way the light slides over Jack’s body and he’s overcome by such a feeling of yearning that he can do nothing as the tide of his own want makes him drag Jack off the path.  
Jack almost yelps in surprise as Gabriel yanks him around and through the maze of bushes until he comes to an abrupt halt the second he judges they are far enough from the path to be found by some unsuspecting guest or the media.  
“Gabe, what’s going on?” Jack moves closer. The night air is warm and a breeze sweeps in from over the city to wrap around them, pushing them closer.  
Gabriel gives in to the current. Just lets it sweep him up and out and over to Jack. He pulls Jack in, hesitates just before their lips meet, and they breathe in time. In. And out. Just a moment. And then Jack closes the distance.  
Jack’s lips are rough, savage. He kisses Gabriel like he is running out of air. Like he _needs_ him, and Gabriel responds just the same.   
When they finally break apart, it is more out of necessity than want. They both gasp, Gabriel’s heart beats a million miles an hour and he holds Jack tightly, not wanting to let go. He feels like a teenager again, like he hadn’t just fought through ten years of war to get here, to this moment where he is discovering what it is like to want a future that isn’t just one where he might die tomorrow. That is full of something other than the fear of loss.  
“Jack,” he whispers. The name grounds him. “Jack,” he repeats hit as he presses his lips up Jack’s neck, punctuating each call of his personal mantra with a tiny kiss. Jack makes a soft noise, almost a moan, and moves closer to Gabriel, pressing up against him. His hands rove over Gabriel’s body, moving down until—

***

—Hoowee, wow that was a little spicier than I thought I remembered, my bad.” Gabriel doesn’t look like he’s sorry at all. If anything, Reaper thinks the shit-eating grin he wears is smugly proud.

“Anyway, the morning after that I got demoted and Jack was made Strike Commander. Eh, at least we had a good night.” Gabriel puts both hands up in a you-win-some-you-lose-some gesture.

Reaper barely hears the comment as he clutches his chest and tries to calm a heart that he must have imagined into being in response to the last five minutes. “I thought you didn’t know which moment you fell in love,” he manages to garble out while he tries to swallow the elation of the kiss.

“That moment wasn’t one where I had fallen in love, I was already in deep at that point. It was more like I finally examined the possibility that I did love him and what that meant for _me_.” Gabriel shrugs. “I realised I hadn’t considered what I wanted to do after the war. Who I wanted to be when I wasn’t the one tasked with trying to save it. What do you do when your duty is done?”

Reaper frowns. All of what Gabriel is saying sounds awfully familiar, like they were connected by the questions they both had to examine. The only difference being, Gabriel had figured his out long ago.

“Oh?” Gabriel tips his head back and looks around at the darkness of his own unconscious mind. “I don’t think we ever really figure it out. We just find pieces of who we want to be during our journey to the answer. And who I wanted to be back then is a far cry from who I am now. Who _we_ are.”

Before Reaper can reply, Gabriel turns from him and suddenly he’s—

***

The night is silent. Gabriel looks up and into the light of a billion stars as he wanders through the path in the cornfield, hand in hand with Jack.  
The stars almost smile down on them, shining on a broken world. It feels like he is almost responsible for picking up the pieces and figuring out where they fit together. He can’t remake the old world, no. That is gone forever. All he can do is delicately place each piece next to the other and hope that the glue will hold them together. Hope that Jack will hold everything together.  
Jack turns a corner and they continue down a narrow path through the high corn. It’s almost creepy how silent it is. How the plants seem to deaden any sound so that it felt almost like they were trapped in a quiet wasteland.  
Suddenly the corn ends. They exit out onto a small decline down to the narrow bank of a stream, happily bubbling away under the stars.  
And all around them the night glows.  
Fireflies. Hundreds of them drift lazily through the dry Indianan air. Gabriel stares at them as he walks forward, tugging Jack along and into their midst.   
When Gabriel looks back at Jack, his blue eyes sparkle with the pale light from the drifting fireflies. He cups a hand around the back of Gabriel’s neck and pulls him in until their lips meet—

***

Gabriel bombards him with memory after memory until Reaper can't take it anymore.

“I get it. You were happy,” Reaper hisses, trying to make them slow down, give him some respite from the images and feelings that wholly envelop him and leave their ghostly imprint.

Gabriel blinks and looks away from him. When he speaks, the words are quiet, melancholic. “Yeah, I suppose I was.”

“It was… nice.” Reaper is at a loss as to what to say. His vocabulary isn’t equipped to deal with any of this. Gabriel doesn't acknowledge that comment so Reaper asks instead, “why do so many of your memories revolve around food?”

Gabriel looks up at him with a tiny smile. “Remember the eggs?” he asks. “But I get it. I think the reason might be that… I, and most of my generation just never really expected to not have the security of readily available food during and after the crisis. We used to have these eating competitions in the latter years after the food rationing ended. McCree won every single one of them,” Gabriel smiles at the memory. Then his mouth tugs down a little. “He always ate so much. There would never be a scrap left in the early days.” He sighs then, “we were the ones saving the world during the crisis and all we had to eat were shitty ration packs. Food was scarce. That kid grew up during the crisis. I’d hate to know how he managed to survive.”

“You never asked him?” Reaper is surprised.

“We were close. But there are some things you never ask. He used to never stop peppering me with questions about the crisis when he first joined. Never wanted to talk about what happened to him though, so I didn’t ask.”

“Doesn’t mean he didn’t want you to.” Reaper wishes more people had asked him questions.

“You have to be prepared to listen,” Gabriel sighs out that last part and drags a hand down his face. “I like to think I knew what I was doing, and was being open when it mattered. But the truth is, I was blind and deaf too. Sometimes I just didn’t want to know. Had my own problems to deal with. Got worse and worse by the end. It’s probably why he left.”

“He left?” Reaper raises his eyebrows. He hadn’t been able to find much out about the fall of Blackwatch. Talon’s archives were encrypted and Sombra had never deigned to share what information she had gleaned about Overwatch’s fall. Reaper had just assumed they had all gone their separate ways after Zurich blew up.

“Nah, McCree walked out a good year before everything fell apart. He tried to tell me once, what was happening. I didn’t listen though—

*

Gabriel sits at a desk, stacked high with paper. The room is dark, no windows.  
A single framed picture and a slowly dying succulent are the only sign of personalisation on the desk.  
He rubs his hand over his eyes. It has been a long night and it’s not the first time he’s regretting taking a Command position in a super-secret black-ops organisation, because it meant he had to do stacks of fucking _paper_ work. On actual paper. Like an animal.  
It isn’t all his own though, and he sighs and pushes one stack aside and brings a different stack of folders forward. He opens the first and starts reading the personnel file. Trying to see between the lines of the old mission report.  
He doesn’t really know why he’s reading recruit files, only that something has been bugging him about some of the newer recruits for a while. Not that he’s been as close to any of that as he should have been.  
The door to his office opens and McCree is there. Twelve years, and he still doesn’t knock. “This a bad time?” the cowboy asks.  
Gabriel leans back in his chair and McCree invites himself into the room. He seems on edge. Keeps looking around, keen eyes flicking to the corners of the room.  
“McCree?” he raises an eyebrow.  
The cowboy pats himself down and finds his cigarettes. He gets one an inch away from his mouth before he remembers that Gabriel doesn’t tolerate smoking in his office.  
“Something’s wrong,” McCree says slowly. “Can’t tell what. Only… only you need to be on the lookout.”  
Gabriel feels a spike of anger. Indignation. It has been a long day and night. “You telling me how to do my job, McCree?”  
The cowboy looks down at his cigarette and then up at Gabriel, meeting his eyes unflinchingly. “I’m tellin’ you, that you ain’t been doin’ your job.”  
Gabriel abruptly stands up. “Get out,” he growls.  
The cowboy gives a lazy salute before walking—

 *

Gabriel massages his temples. “I was an idiot. Should have seen it a lot sooner. I looked harder after that, but not hard enough,” Gabriel swallows, as if he has a bad taste in his mouth. “Jack and I hadn’t been together in months and I threw myself into work. The world was falling apart again. Old patches we’d sewn on during and after the crisis were beginning to wear away.” He shakes his head.

“What happened with you and Jack?” Reaper asks. The Soldier had recognised him—or rather, he had recognised Gabriel’s body—but he hadn’t put up much of a fight the few times they had clashed. Reaper had never been able to finish the job though. Somehow, something always went wrong. The time before the warehouse, his nanites had chosen that moment to frenzy and storm. He hadn’t been able to contain it so he had had to sink back into smoke and let the Soldier live another day.

Actually… Reaper looks suspiciously at Gabriel. But not too suspiciously. He doesn’t exactly want to admit that he is feels relief at that the Soldier is alive. _Was_ alive. He remembers the spreading pool of black ink in the warehouse…

“What happened to us?” Gabriel mulls that one over. “We fell apart. It was kinda like watching one of those slow motion car crash videos. Just hurtling towards a final moment you know is coming but the impact is still fast and brutal and somehow unexpected. It took years of being apart. Of our respective jobs killing us with their commitments while at the same time, we were being poisoned within. In the end… in the end I still went back to him. Tried to tell him what he’d missed. What we’d both been so blind to.”

Gabriel grimaces at his own memory. “For a tactician expert, I probably could have been more tactful. Kinda made me realise how much I’d missed him though… I should have been there for him while it all fell apart.”

Gabriel drags both his hands down his face and sighs heavily into them. It seems like such a vulnerable thing to do that Reaper wonders if he shouldn’t offer something. He isn’t sure what though.

“A hug might be nice,” Gabriel mumbles. “Been years since someone hugged me. And you, I suppose.”

Reaper takes a hesitant step towards his ghost, not quite believing what he was about to do. But he can’t deny that he’s also wondered what it would feel like. So he reaches out and takes the ghost of a dead man into his arms—his strange not-arms—and he wraps them around Gabriel.

He feels Gabriel’s shoulders shudder. Just once, and he breathes out slowly. Then Reaper feels the arms around his back—

And a mother puts a hand on his shoulder—

A sister squeezes his hand—

A boy with blonde hair who smiles like the sun and kisses like a savage moon, leans towards him and takes him into his arms—

And Reaper knows what this means. But…he can’t…

_He_ can’t…

“You never stopped, did you?” Reaper mumbles into Gabriel’s shoulder. He marvels at it. The idea that a _feeling_ could endure so much pain and hurt.

“Never stopped what?” Gabriel’s voice is distant. Like it’s fading. Or like it’s underwater.

Is Reaper underwater? He can’t tell. He blinks rapidly and suddenly the blackness is gone and colors bleed into his mind. He feels like he’s swimming towards the surface of something. Shadows play upon the restless surface.

Then he bursts up into world. Light. Extremely bright, he flinches back from it.

The pain hits him as he doubles over, his stomach on fire.

But he can’t shake that thought. That feeling. It endures. It’s hysterical. That everything could end so horrifically, that they—Gabriel and Jack and Reaper—were hurtling towards a fate that neither of them wanted, but that they weren’t strong enough to change.

And through it all… the world focuses. He blinks and there’s a face in front of him. Freckles pepper the man’s nose and his blue eyes have dark circles beneath them. His strong jaw is dusted with five o’clock shadow. Blonde hair a mess.

And through it all…

He never stopped.

Reaper laughs, a deep wheeze that grates into pained sobs when his stomach feels like it’s being torn apart by a hungry dog. He clutches at the man in front of him, fingers finding purchase in his rumpled shirt, pulling Jack towards him.

“He never stopped,” Reaper laughs out the words in a whisper. _Oh god, everything hurts so much._

“What?” Jack’s eyes are wide and he seems to be struggling to figure out where to put his hands so he doesn’t hurt him. Jack eventually closes them around Reaper’s shoulders, steadying him.

“He never stopped,” Reaper wheezes like it’s the funniest thing in the world. Here he was, thinking he had been doing Reyes a favour by taking out his Soldier.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

“Who never stopped? What are you talking about?” Jack looks alarmed now. He reaches out and hits the call button on the side of the hospital bed.

“Him… Gabriel,” Reaper finally remembers his ghost’s name, says it reverently. “Gabriel. He never stopped loving you. Right to the end. And then beyond.” Reaper lets go of Jack and slumps back, the last of the giggles fade as he takes in Jack’s stunned expression. “Ah,” Reaper clutches his stomach as the colors begin to bleed.

“Have a good life Jack,” are the last words he manages.

Then he’s falling again, the pain disappears and he drops into that white space, the last thing to fade is a pair of blue eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably the most self-indulgent thing I've ever written. Hope you're all still enjoying it!


	6. The Leader Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this took forever to update. It required some pretty heavy editing and life has been nuts lately.
> 
> CW: there's a sex scene (aaayyyoooo) in this chapter. It's not explicit but I have marked the whole section out by the bolded *** and first sentence.

_When you try to dream with what you have_  
_All a sudden fingers pointing see the vultures_  
_Everybody wrote this, everybody mad_  
_Everybody stunted on the chances that they had_  
_Think of the all expectations everybody had_  
_Took it on your shoulders and wore everybody's bag  
_ _Hero_

        Sampa the Great. _Everybody’s Hero_.

 

The war ends.  
The rebuilding begins.  
Time begins to flicker forward again, faster and faster.

***

Reaper and Gabriel fall in and out of these moments of his life, sometimes only witnessing a snatch of conversation, a few seconds of sights and smells and people he has little context for and so cannot understand.

But mostly Reaper concentrates on the one thing that binds these tiny moments, these threads of living memory, together.

A feeling. Deep in his chest.

A warmth that makes his phantom lips turn up, his dead heart beat faster, his stomach nervously flutter. As if Gabriel was—

***

Fareeha turns to him, seven years old. Hands on her hips.  
Gabriel raises an eyebrow at her. A challenge then. “I’ll teach you how to shoot one when you can hold it in one hand and recite the entire Overwatch safety manifesto. In English _and_ Arabic,” he tacks onto the end. Couldn’t make this too easy on her now.  
Fareeha narrows her eyes at the oversized shotguns at his hips. Then she looks up at his arms.  
“That’s hardly fair,” she points out.  
“Life isn’t meant to be fair.” Gabriel shrugs, “unless you think you’ll always be too weak to try.”  
Gabriel didn’t think he would ever find himself backing away from a seven-year-old, but Fareeha’s face is truly something to behold. “You’re on,” she says.

***

 **“I remember finding her in the gym after school begging agents to teach her to lift weights.”** Gabriel smiles at the memory as they fall.

“And did you?” Reaper asks.

**“There wasn’t anything in the world that would stop Fareeha from chasing her dreams in Overwatch. I ended up teaching her how to shoot on her twelfth birthday.”**

Reaper tilts his head in incredulity.

 **“Not one of my shotguns, god no. The knockback would have sent it through her face. Nah, I gave her a double-barrel 12 gauge and showed her how to hold it properly in both hands.”** Gabriel’s eyes are distant and he suddenly grins. “ **Ana gave me such a dressing down after she found out that I couldn’t look her in the eye for months afterwards. Something about being an irresponsible adult figure. By the end of it, all I could do was shrug. Told her that a promise is a promise. It took Fareeha five years to get there. She’s got perseverance and drive. Just like her Ma.”** Gabriel laughs. **“Ana couldn’t say much after that. Mind you, didn’t stop her from skinning McCree a couple of years later for doing the exact same thing.”**

***

Gabriel visits his sister often in the early days. She has a beautiful home in one of the rebuilt neighbourhoods of Los Angeles. So far removed from where they grew up.  
She keeps the traditions alive though.  
Gabriel is often overwhelmed when he visits. Not the least by his three nieces who climb all over him and demand to hear stories of how it used to be during the Crisis.  
He palms them off to Jack in those moments. Prefers to sit back and let it wash over him. This feeling that somehow…  
It was all worth it.  
He remembers Ana’s words in those moments.  
And he smiles.  
Because he has helped create a world where the people he loves can thrive.

*

Jack and Gabriel lay in bed. He holds on tightly, trying to let Jack know that everything will be ok.  
Just a dream.  
Just a nightmare.  
They both had them. Had those moments where it would all crash over them and they would feel like they were drowning.  
But they had each other in those moments.  
So it was ok.

***

Reaper looks at Gabriel as they fall.

The bars of the cage divide them apart.

He feels a tug. As though he longs for these moments he falls through but can’t seem to touch. As though he wants his own.

Gabriel smiles sadly at him and Reaper wonders what it means.

*******

**The room is dark, lit only by the moonlight that streams through the French doors that lead out to a balcony overlooking the sea. A soft summer night’s breeze whispers through the room, wraps around the two bodies that lie entangled on the bed.**

Reaper lies on his back and looks up into Jack’s eyes, alight with blue fire and sparkling with the pale silver moonlight. Feels his heart stop as he finds himself in this moment. At the same time he can’t find the words or the will to do anything as Jack leans down, presses his body and all it’s smooth curves and hard muscles down onto his own. Reaper finds his hands almost moving of their own accord, dragging themselves up over Jack’s back.

He feels Jack’s breath against his neck.

The first touch of his lips against Reaper’s skin sends an electric pulse over his body that makes him shiver with anticipation. Jack presses his lips against Reaper’s neck once again and Reaper’s breath hitches. And he can’t take it anymore.

His body feels like ice and fire. Any point of contact between them sparks with a current that sends sensations to places Reaper didn’t even know he had. He feels like he should be panicking. Should be running far far away from his mortal enemy whose lips have slowly, languidly made their way up and onto his own.

It’s like nothing Reaper has ever known. He gives into it and just _feels_. The softness of Jack’s lips upon his own. The way Jack straddles him, his bare chest flush with Reaper’s own, their hands entangled. Jack kisses passionately, severely. He deepens the kiss, tongue darting out to swipe across Reaper’s, and he feels himself give in further, feels a rush of euphoria in his chest, a fluttering in his stomach, and a certain sensation near his groin—

There’s a polite cough from beside him. **“That’s my husband you’re kissing.”**

Reaper’s eyes go wide. His mind goes blank. He goes rigid beneath Jack, panic setting in thick and fast. _Shit._ This can’t be happening. What does he do? What can he do? How does one _do_ the… _Do?_

Jack breaks off the kiss. “Gabe?” he whispers from above him. “Are you alright?”

 _No._ Nothing about this situation was all right. Gabriel had _warned_ him about it too. Reaper feels his heart kick up a notch as he starts to hyperventilate.

Jack stares at him with a bewildered expression on his face and begins to rise, face getting further away, retreating from him. From Reaper, and _no, he couldn’t go_. Reaper clutches at Jack’s bare chest, doesn’t want him to leave. So he does the only thing he can think of to get Jack to stay.

Reaper doesn’t think. He gives up and in at the same time—

Gabriel blinks his eyes and stares into his husband’s face. “Hey Jackie,” he whispers.

Reaper feels his chest—Gabriel’s chest—fill with wonder…and with another feeling he knows that Gabriel never gave up. The one that has endured two lifetimes.

“Uh, hey Gabe,” Jack says from above him.

Gabriel blinks his eyes again and Reaper catches a sense of confusion and triumph drift across the void that connects them both. Then he looks over to where Reaper’s disembodied ghost slowly backs away from the pair on the bed. How far he could get from the body before his ghost loses signal? Do ghosts have an off button?

Gabriel swallows and looks back up at Jack. A grin slowly spreads across his face, and he moves his hands up onto Jack’s shoulders and sits himself up. He keeps flicking his eyes over to where Reaper is trying his best not to concentrate on the way the moonlight outlines Jack’s body, carving out his perfect muscles in the dark.

“Are you ok?” Jack asks again.

Gabriel pauses for a moment before he slowly says, “yes.” Then he holds up a finger. “Can you give me one second? Gotta go… uh, to the bathroom.”

“Sure..." Jack stares at him, looking both concerned and confused as he moves back to let Gabriel hop up. "You know you’re killing the mood, right?” 

Gabriel looks apologetic. “Yep. But this can’t really wait. I will be right back, I promise.”

“And you’re sure you’re ok?”

Gabriel waves away his concern as he looks at Reaper and flicks his eyes at the bathroom door in a _follow me, now_ gesture. “Totally fine. Nothing wrong here.” He opens the bathroom door and follows Reaper through.

As soon as the door clicks shut Gabriel hisses, “what the fuck are you doing?”

 **“What do you mean, what am I doing? What are _you_ doing?” **Reaper hisses right back.

“Me? I was being a passenger right up until you started kissing my husband.”

 **“Well maybe that’s why I’m the passenger now… at least for this moment anyway.”** Reaper still doesn’t know if he’s willing to give it all up yet.

“What? You want to be in control of every moment!” Gabriel opens his mouth to say something more, pauses and stares at Reaper for a full five seconds. “Are you telling me this is a consent thing?”

Now it’s Reaper’s turn to look confused. **“What do you mean a consent thing?”**

“You don’t want to have sex with Jack because he doesn’t know it’s you.”

Reaper stares at him. _Well._ Now that Gabriel has laid _that_ out on the table, it’s a pretty good reason to give up his body, but it isn’t the only one he is being a ghost for. He cringes as he realises how that sounds.

“Oh, right. Should have realised you wouldn’t have considered consent.” Gabriel gives him a piercing glare and Reaper wilts.

He doesn’t really know what to say to that.

Gabriel rubs a hand over his eyes. “Why _now_ , of all times?”

 **“Uhh,”** Reaper stalls, mind tripping over excuses he could give that Gabriel is probably listening to right this moment. But all the excuses that pale in comparison to the _big_ excuse; the one he’s avoided thinking about since the horrible possibility _of this very moment_ occurred to him—

“Oh no,” Gabriel holds up a hand. “Oh no no no no no. Am I going to have to explain the birds and the bees to you? Shit. Are you telling me Talon didn’t even program you with basic sex education?”

Reaper just stares at him.

Gabriel throws up his hands, “c’mon man! Are you serious?”

 **“I know what sex is,”** Reaper snaps, hardly believing he is even having this conversation. Has reached a point where he can have this kind of conversation. He starts calculating the odds of being able to snatch back Gabriel’s body and jump off the balcony before either Jack or Gabriel can stop him.

“I’m sure you do,” Gabriel’s quiet voice cuts into Reaper’s thoughts. “But by the sounds of it, you have no idea _how_ to do it.”

Reaper takes a step forward, **“what makes you think I had any desire to even _think_ about anything like that while I suffered.”**

Gabriel is quiet for a moment before he sighs, “yeah, yeah fair enough. Ok. Well… guess this is going to be the learning experience of a lifetime.”

Reaper blinks. **“What?”**

“Since you noped out of this, it’s all on me, baby. And you can bet I’m going to take advantage of this moment. Have you seen how _young_ he is? Not to say he isn’t still good looking when he’s old, but _damn_ he’s perfect now.” Gabriel looks into the mirror behind Reaper. Lifts a hand up to gently touch his face, rubs it through his beard and over his shaved head. “Fuck, I’m pretty young too. Must be in my, what, mid-thirties? God, it’s weird knowing what’s going to happen. Anticipating my own death.” Gabriel trails off and continues to peer into the mirror, prodding his scars and examining his teeth.

His thoughts are still entirely unreadable to Reaper.

“Hey Gabe,” a muffled voice comes through the door. “Are you ok in there?”

Gabriel blinks and looks around, suddenly remembers where he is, and his eyes light up again. “Yeah, I’ll be right out. Two seconds.”

He turns to Reaper and makes finger guns. “Hope you enjoy this as much as I will.”

What?

_What?_

**“Wait! Wait, wait, wait!”** Reaper desperately grates out. **“You mean you’re just going to let me _watch?”_**

“Well, yeah. It’ll be an educational experience.” Gabriel pauses. “And when I say experience, I mean _experience_. Cause you’re going to feel everything.”

Reaper feels his not-chest seize up. Gabriel can’t be serious. Can he?

“Deadly serious.” Gabriel says. Then he sighs, “but hey, if you _don’t_ want me to do it, I won’t.” He rubs a hand down his face. “Guess if we want to do this consent thing right, then all parties should agree.”

Reaper feels like he’s at a crossroads. On the one hand, kissing Jack just before was undeniably one of the best memories he’s ever made. The feel of his lips. The curve of his neck. That look he had given him… well, Gabriel… in that moment after. It all makes him want to do more. _Feel_ more.

Of what he isn’t sure.

Gabriel tilts his head to the side. “I can’t show you what to feel, but I can show you how _I_ feel. You just have to let me.”

Reaper swallows. Thinks about Jack. Thinks about Gabriel. Thinks about how he’s inexplicably become so tangled in their lives that he barely has any idea who he is anymore.

What he wants anymore.

**“How do I let you?”**

Gabriel grins at him. “You’re already doing it. But if you don’t want to just feel like a weird voyeuristic owl man, just… give in to the sensation. Listen to it. You’ve had plenty of practice with this kind of thing before.”

_Give in to it?_

_Ah._ The nanites. Except instead of nanites, he is giving in to Gabriel.

He looks at the dead man, suddenly utterly terrified of the very notion of what he has to do, but also feeling something akin to anticipation. Excitement. Gabriel spreads his arms, almost as if he is inviting Reaper in for an embrace. So Reaper thinks of it like that, and then he doesn’t think at all. He _listens_ instead—

Gabriel blinks as Reaper’s projection flickers out and he is suddenly alone in the hotel bathroom. Well, not alone, Reaper is still in his head somewhere, but Gabriel tries not to think too hard about him. God only knows he’s spent the last five years and however long they’ve been falling through time thinking about an AI who won’t give up his stolen body. Apparently not unless he’s either on the verge of death, or facing down sex with Jack Morrison.

Gabriel briefly sends up a prayer of thanks to the god of time for dumping him in this moment. _Good choice_ , he thinks, and then tacks on, _and you better not drag me out of here until I’m done with Jack._ Time had better not cockblock him.

Gabriel breathes in. And out. His mouth quirking up at the way the breath comes out almost shaky and… what is that strange sensation in the pit of his stomach? A fluttering. Restlessness.

 _No._ Surely he isn’t nervous? Gabriel is about to turn the handle when he leans his head against the bathroom door. Pauses for a second. Takes it in.

Takes it all in.

He has fallen through time, through his life, with an insane homicidal AI in control of his body, and now that Gabriel is finally back in it, the first thing he gets to do besides fight for his life during the crisis, is have sex with Jack?

 _Eh, life’s not so bad,_ he thinks. _Could be worse._ But that’s all in the future. Right now he’s just really fucking glad his plan is working.

He doesn’t let himself dwell on it, turns the door handle instead and comes face to face with Jack. His husband stands there, bathed in silver moonlight like some kind of Greek god. SEP made their bodies resilient, magnificent, powerful. But Gabriel blinks and the shadows reveal the bumps and ridges on Jack’s skin, remnants of a life fought in service to war, and he remembers that in the end they were both only human.

Jack frowns slightly. He must have spotted something in Gabriel’s eyes, Gabriel doesn’t know what, because at this moment he is a turmoil of feelings and they rise up and threaten to overtake him as he drinks in Jack Morrison as if he was an oasis in the desert.

“Are you sure you’re—

Jack doesn’t get to finish his sentence because Gabriel closes the distance between them and kisses Jack so savagely, so passionately, that he stumbles back a few steps in surprise. Gabriel presses forward, dancing Jack backwards until the backs of his knees hit the bed and Jack almost flails as he falls onto the messy bed covers. He looks up at Gabriel with astonishment and blatant arousal, opens his mouth to say something but can’t because Gabriel’s knees hit the bed either side of Jack, and then his mouth is over Jack’s perfect lips, hands roving over Jack’s broad chest, feeling the muscles rippling beneath him. Jack rakes his hands up Gabriel’s back, squeezes his shoulders hard enough to bruise when Gabriel nips at his bottom lip.

“God, Jack. It’s been too long,” Gabriel pants. He remembers him though. Knows him. Every bump and ridge. Every scar. All the soft and hard edges on Jack’s body. Knows where to massage his fingers, _just so_ , to make Jack gasp, like he does right now.

Jack’s hands claw at him, clumsier than he’s used to, but still Jack’s hands all the same. There’s a hesitation in his embrace that Gabriel hasn’t felt in years, but that is sending shivers down his spine now. It’s a slight air of nervousness, the quiet pause of a new lover. “Gabe,” Jack pants as he writhes beneath his hands. “It’s barely even been a _day_.”

“A day,” Gabriel repeats. He kisses across Jack’s collar bone, makes his way over the broad, beautiful chest. Pauses at the few scars there, gently traces the newer ones and welcomes them with his mouth. There are so few, Gabriel marvels. They both collect more than their fair share over the years, none of them really sources of pride, mostly just idiotic mistakes or, as Jack likes to refer to them: heroic misjudgements. Gabriel smiles into one particular scar Jack had received trying to save a kitten during a recon mission gone wrong in the rubble of Paris. Gabriel had ended up saving both Jack and the kitten and was treated to a wrathful set of pissed-off kitten claws and an embarrassing collection of media photos for his valiant efforts. Gabriel kisses the precious scar and continues down Jack’s chest, _heroic misjudgements indeed._  

Gabriel turns his thoughts back to the conversation at hand. They’d barely gone a day without doing this? Gabriel sighs, _if only_. “An entire day?” he whispers as he tongues Jack’s nipple, presses kisses along and up his chest until he makes it back up to Jack’s neck. He keeps his hand on Jack’s other nipple, pinches it. Delights in the way Jack arches his chest out, stretches his neck up so that Gabriel can lick a trail back up to his earlobe. He nibbles it, tugs it just so and grins when Jack gasps and lets out a moan. “Oh Jackie,” Gabriel whispers, unable to stop himself, barely knowing where his mind is or what words are tumbling out of his mouth. “Only a day? It feels like an entire _lifetime_ I’ve been away from you.”

“I’ve missed you, you know,” Gabriel continues. He doesn’t particularly care how Jack will interpret his words since he and the AI should be gone from this time by the morning. “I’ve missed every inch of you.”

How long had it been? Really been since he and Jack had actually been together without silently hating each other for it? He doesn’t want to answer that question. He just wants to live in this moment where their entire world didn’t blow up because of their own failings. Where… where he doesn’t feel conflicted for still loving the man who killed him. Jack becomes that man, but for now, he is simply Jack. And Gabriel has missed him.

He feels Jack’s arousal beneath him, grinds down on him and catches it between his ass cheeks. He raises his eyebrows at Jack as he bucks up, craving the friction. And Gabriel knows, he just _knows_ how this night is going to go. He knows what he needs, and he knows exactly what a certain voyeuristic passenger likely hiding in the back of his mind also needs.

Jack is a man who loves being fucked and Gabriel is not one to deny him that pleasure seeing as he’s the one who loves fucking Jack. But this Jack was not _his_ Jack. His Jack is a salty old man bleeding out in a warehouse in the distant future. Gabriel has _plans_ for that Jack.

This Jack though—this young thing with all the stamina of a prize-winning stallion—was raring to go.

Gabriel leans forward, takes that friction away and almost laughs at the whine that comes out of Jack’s throat, covers it with a passionate kiss that Jack wholeheartedly takes up. When they finally part again, Gabriel looks down on his partner and whispers, “fuck me, Jack.”

He can’t help but grin as those ice-blue eyes widen, pupils blowing out as Jack slowly blinks and lets out a shaky breath.

“Are you sure?”

Gabriel resists the urge to roll his eyes. “If I didn’t want you to fuck me, I would already be three fingers deep in you.” He leans forward over Jack’s head and plucks the bottle of lotion from where it sits next to the square packet on the bedside table to place it in Jack’s hand. “Instead, I want it the other way around. _Comprende_?”

Jack locks eyes with him and they stare at each other for what feels like eternity. Gabriel could fall into those endless blue eyes, feels himself falling for them all over again.

Then Jack begins to laugh. It seems almost startled out of him at first, but soon enough he’s cackling. He flings an arm over his face in an attempt to hide the creeping blush that just serves to highlight his freckles and make Gabriel fall just that little bit more for him. Because, god, it’s been _years_ since he’s heard Jack laugh in his sweet tenor of a song, and it fills Gabriel with a feeling more that longing. A yearning. But he doesn’t let Jack see that. Instead, Gabriel sits back on his haunches and crosses his arms, and does his best to school his expression into Thoroughly Unimpressed.

When Jack’s laugh finally peters out into little fits of giggles he peeks up at Gabriel from behind his arm.

“Was it something I said?” Gabriel asks in a mild tone.

Jack snorts and wipes the tears out of his eyes. “Remember what _I said_ earlier about killing the mood?”

Gabriel lets his eyes drift down Jack’s body. “Your _mood_ doesn’t seem to be dampened in the slightest,” he says pointedly.

“It wasn’t the most romantic way you could have said that.”

Gabriel sits back and crosses his arms. “Look, if you can come up with a romantic way for me to tell you I want you to finger me, then I would love to hear it. I’m a realist, not a romantic.”

“You’ve been plenty romantic befor—

“For fucks sake, Jack, are we going to do this or debate semantics all nigh—

This time Jack cuts him off by pulling him down into his embrace. He kisses him with a savagery, as though he is a spark that sets Gabriel’s tinder ablaze. It’s intoxicating and soon enough they are deep in the kiss, rutting against each other. Jack bites down on Gabriel’s lip at the same time he hears the pop of a lid that makes him shiver in anticipation.

The first finger is gentle as it circles his tight hole, coating it with cool slick before eventually pushing in. Another finger follows, and Gabriel can’t stop the low moan from escaping as Jack’s fingers twist and thrust and he can feel himself opening, ready for what is next.

When Gabriel sinks down onto Jack, revelling in the stretch and _god,_ it feels good to be full again; to be joined to this man again. He kisses Jack fiercely, puts equal parts pain and pleasure into the kiss and tries to communicate just how much it hurts to lose him, to know he will lose him again, be dragged away from these perfect hours they have spent together.

Jack melts into his embrace. Moulds himself to Gabriel and they move in a kind of perfect harmony that takes them both to their peak.

***

Gabriel throws his arms out, his face tilted upwards and lips moving as he mutters something Reaper can’t hear as they fall through the white space once more. It takes Reaper several moments before he has the courage to look Gabriel in the eye, hoping that he might meet some kind chagrin there so they could at least share his indecent embarrassment.

No such luck.

Gabriel meets his gaze with a smug grin and a twinkle in his eye.

*

Gabriel and Jack walk through the park hand in hand. It’s a chill autumn evening and they huddle close for warmth. “Wow, this seems entirely too normal for us,” says Jack.  
Gabriel squeezes Jack’s hand. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s almost as though I didn’t set up this entire undercover operation in order to bait out a terrorist organisation with Overwatch’s Strike Commander in a vulnerable position. Totally didn’t do that…. At all.”  
Jack pulls a face. “You’re such a romantic,” he says wryly. “And don’t make me sound like some kind of delicate peach ready to be snatched away from the market.”  
“Lucky for you, your peach dealer is _very_ protective of his wares—  
They hear a twig snap.  
And they both rocket into action. Jack dives forward into a roll, just managing to avoid the tranquiliser dart that flies over his head while Gabriel yells into his comms, activating the agents dotted around the quiet park. He hears distant gunfire, but he doesn’t let it bother him; his agents are trained well.  
The whistle is the only warning he gets and he sways to the side just as a blade comes out of the darkness, narrowly missing his ear. He snaps out a palm and manages to catch the assassin’s arm, following up with a well-aimed kick into the assassin’s knee. There’s a sickening crunch and the assassin grunts, before trying to swing the blade back around with his free arm.  
He doesn’t stand a chance. Gabriel easily avoids the clumsy swing and throws two short, sharp punches into the temple of the assassin, making them go limp.  
Then he snaps his gaze to where Jack stands over the bodies of two other assassins. He's breathing hard but that doesn’t stop him from looking down his nose at Gabriel to give him the most self-satisfied smug grin possible.  
Gabriel spreads his arms in a mock bow to Jack. “I guess they just didn’t expect the peach to strike back.”  
The gunfire has stopped, the fight over in less than ten seconds.  
Jack rolls his eyes. “You know, for a black ops commander, you’re not very subtle. Or quiet.”  
Gabriel shrugs and makes his way over to Jack’s downed agents, putting an arm around Jack and pulling out his phone. “I don’t have to be _after_ we’ve caught the bad guys. Anyway, shut up and get in my snap. McCree owes me ten bucks; he thought I’d have to rescue you.”

*

He walks through the door of their tiny apartment, dead on his feet, muscles ready to give out and let him collapse.  
It’s been three months since he’s been home. The op had been long and hard and lonely. He expects the apartment to be dusty. To be empty.  
Jack is always busy these days.  
Instead, he stops dead in his tracks. Lifts his head to the air and breathes in deeply.  
Cookies?  
That can’t be right.  
Why would the apartment smell of cookies? Freshly baked cookies at that.  
His pack hits the ground with a heavy thump, and he hears something in the kitchen down the hall smash in response. And he’s entirely unprepared for the sight of Jack Morrison, Strike Commander of Overwatch, wearing an apron with flour smeared across it. He appears in the hallway and freezes as he sees Gabriel.  
“Oh my god, were you baking cookies for me?” Gabriel asks the only thing his brain seems to be able to process.  
Jack rubs the back of his neck as though he’s embarrassed. “Hah, yeah. I was.”  
Gabriel walks towards Jack and the smell of delicious cookies. “Holy shit, I’m living the domestic dream,” he whispers to himself as he falls into Jack’s ready and waiting arms. He pulls Jack in for a long kiss that invigorates him with a new energy, gives him a second wind as he feels Jack’s roving hands cup his ass.  
Jack has managed to get flour on his nose and he kisses it gently away. “It’s good to be home.”  
Because that’s what this is now.  
Home.

***

 **“It doesn’t stay this way, as much as I wish it would.”** Gabriel says quietly as they fall once more. **“Things don’t always stay the same."**

"Then why don't you change it?" Reaper braces himself for what is coming. What he knows is coming.

 **"Because people change too,"** Gabriel says simply.

**

Jack is yelling at him so he yells back. They are arguing. Again.  
This time over the cyborg.  
“You think you can just waltz on in there and offer the kid a second shot at life when he lies burnt and bloodied and missing three of his limbs? What the fuck did you expect him to say?” He had managed to keep his tone calm until the last bit.  
“We need him, Reyes. Regardless—  
“Oh, I’m Reyes now am I—  
“Shut up,” Jack’s face gets redder and redder. “The Shimada have been a thorn in our side ever since the end of the Crisis. This is our chance.”  
“Our chance for what? To get a kid to kill his family? That’s pretty fucked up, Jack.”  
“He offered his help in exchange for ours.”  
“I don’t think he was in a position to refuse,” Gabriel says it with steel in his eyes and fury in his heart. He knows Jack made a call. That doesn’t make it right. Fuck. Jack hadn’t even told him about the Shimada kid until Angela was halfway through rebuilding his body into a weapon. Gabriel shakes his head. “People call that blackmail.”  
Jack stands up from behind his desk. “This matter is closed, Commander Reyes. Congratulations on your new asset.”  
Gabriel doesn’t even bother saluting as he turns his back on Jack and walks out of the office. 

*

The bags under Jack’s eyes are more pronounced than ever. It’s been a week since Jack had left their little apartment in a fit of rage, storming out after a yelling match that had lasted for what seemed like an age.  
Gabriel faces him now, psyching himself up to do the right thing. Trying to be the better one.  
Jack just makes it so difficult sometimes.

*

“Gabi,” Mia’s quiet voice comes from the dark behind him. He hears her bare feet pad over the cold tiles of the balcony and then stop as she takes up the space next to him. The light touch on his shoulder nearly undoes him, and he sighs heavily in an attempt to mask the shiver.  
But of course Mia knows there’s something wrong.  
“Why didn’t Jack come this year?” she asks the quiet night.  
Gabriel bites the inside of his cheek so hard he tastes blood. His eyes sting. Goddammit. He had thought he might be able to get through this. Might be able to just let it go, all those tiny moments where he and Jack seem to be drifting further and further apart as the months and years trudge onwards.  
He hadn’t expected that Jack would actually decide not to come home for Christmas. He was pulling longer and longer hours lately, the UN on his ass over numerous leaks and dead agents. Gabriel had tried to offer to help, but he has his own problems to deal with too. Blackwatch was getting unwieldy. The UN had initiated several recruiting drives without consulting him first and he’s found himself feeling less and less in control of mission assignments. It didn’t help that he was buried under mounds of paperwork that left him exhausted—  
Mia tugs his arm gently and pulls him into a hug. It breaks him out of his self-pitying reverie and dumps him back into this harsh reality of a Christmas without Jack.  
Mia squeezes him and says, “I know things are hard, Gabi, I’ve seen the news. But you have to make things right again. The world depends on you. Jack depends on you.”  
Gabriel doesn’t say anything.  
Doesn’t want to face a reality where he might lose Jack.  
But Mia is right. He needs to be the one to make sure that doesn’t happen.

*

They are yelling again. Jack thinks he’s gone too far. He believes he’s gone far enough.  
Enough to save twenty thousand lives.  
“And how many dead? How many civilians?” Jack asks.  
“Thirty is a small price to pay for twenty thousand. They were a calculated loss.”  
_Calculated loss._ He hates himself in that moment.  
Jack doesn’t bother to mask the disgust from his face. 

***

Reaper watches it happens again and again.

These moments where Gabriel and Jack fall apart. Slowly. Loudly. Quietly.

And even though he can’t tell what Gabriel really thinks, can’t hear his thoughts, he can’t shake this feeling as he watches. It’s as though, deep down, Jack will always be the one Gabriel looks at first in a room. Will always be in his dreams. Will always…

Always.

Gabriel just looks at him through the bars. He doesn’t hide anything, the truth etched into his scarred face, carved in the laugh lines around his eyes.

Reaper blinks and looks away. Because even though he knows how it ends, it hurts more than he expects.

*

Gabriel throws himself into missions.  
Assigns himself the long, undercover ones just to get out of base for months at a time.  
Tells himself he isn’t running away.  
Tells himself he doesn’t need Jack. Has never _needed_ him.  
And yet. Through it all.  
He longs for him.  
In his weaker moments, Gabriel wishes Jack would smile at him again.  
Would look his way once more.

*

Faster and faster the world comes undone.  
Old gangs coming back with a vengeance.  
Old wounds opening again.  
He loses seventeen agents in the span of a year.  
The worst loss since the crisis.

*

Ana gets shot.  
They don’t recover her body. The funeral is held on a sunny day and they all stand there, resplendent in their crisp uniforms. Fareeha looks at him through her tears and he knows that through the grief, she’s disappointed in him.  
She should be.  
_No one left behind._  
Gabriel holds it together until they return to the base.  
He sees Jack at the end of the hallway. His eyes are red and he looks like death. Hair almost completely white now. Thinning.  
Their eyes meet.  
Jack turns his back on him.  
And walks away.

*

McCree leaves. Just takes his meagre belongings one night and leaves.  
Gabriel searches for a week, but somehow a man who dresses like a cowboy is good enough to be a ghost.  
He taught him well.  
He swallows down the bile that rises to his throat at the thought of why he had left and he throws himself into his investigation.

*

He takes the ring off his finger and he places it on the desk in front of Jack.  
Jack looks at it, confused. “What… Gabe, what are you saying.”  
“I’m saying that you are blind to what is right in front of you. And I no longer want to be part of what you expect to have, but don’t see.”  
He feels the pit yawn wide. Feels himself slipping towards the edge. This was for the best. He hasn’t been able to sleep properly for months. Has been alone for months. The UN is on his ass about the leaked Blackwatch files. Talon has infiltrated them.  
And now Jack knows. Gabriel had finally told him that if they didn’t do anything, it was all going to come crashing down. But they could stop it. Together.  
Only Jack hadn’t listened.  
Jack hasn’t noticed the strange agents. The missions going spectacularly wrong. Certain UN representatives and the public are calling for his head and all Jack can think about is Overwatch’s reputation.  
The worst thing is, Gabriel has no evidence of any of it. Talon are meticulous. He had thought he wouldn’t risk blowing this wide open until he had the evidence. But he’s tired. God, he’s just so tired of it all. He had thought Jack would trust him enough to open his own investigation.  
To listen.  
But Jack hadn’t seen it.  
Jack hasn’t seen him for years now.  
Occasionally they would fuck it out and things would be better for a time.  
Not anymore. Gabriel just can’t do it anymore.  
He is exhausted. He had thought Jack would trust him.  
“You’re right,” Jack whispers—  
For a moment Gabriel thinks Jack might be willing to listen. To see—  
But Jack takes off his glove and then the matching ring on his own hand. “We’re over. We’ve been over for years.” He places his ring next to Gabriel’s and pushes them back across the desk. “Take them. I don’t want them.”  
_I don’t want you anymore_ —  
That’s all Gabriel hears. He looks into Jack’s eyes, picks up the rings and leaves.

**

He drives an old car. An ancient one. Has all the windows open as he speeds down the highway, wind blasting into the car. Doesn’t know where he’s going, just that he wants to leave. Leave it all behind.  
Fury sits in Gabriel’s stomach. Bubbles away, simmering. He wears an old t-shirt. The tags that weigh down his neck are hidden underneath it. There are two new additions to the chain and they feel as though they are burning through his chest.  
Feels like his heart is burning through his ribcage to meet them.  
Music blares from speakers, louder than the wind but just barely. Metal. Heavy. A man wails into the microphone:

_I wouldn't hold my breath if I was you_  
_You broke my heart & there's nothing you can do_  
_And now you know, now you know  
_ _True friends stab you in the front_

And Reaper bursts into laughter, shoulders shaking in fitful spurts that eventually end up as heaving sobs. Tears roll down his face. He can’t stop them. Doesn’t even try in this stupid body that isn’t really his, feeling emotions that aren’t his own.

_Aren’t they?_

Gabriel sits in the passenger seat with his arms crossed. He slowly turns to Reaper. **“Are you laughing at my breakup?”**

“I’m laughing because you said _I_ was the edgy one when you listen to this garbage.” Reaper can’t take his hands off the steering wheel to wipe his eyes.

There’s another tiny issue here…

He has no idea how to drive.

Gabriel pulls his beanie down low over his eyes and points to the radio. **“Turn it up. If I’m going to survive thirty years of war only to die in a fiery car crash because an AI from the future doesn’t know how to fucking drive, I’d at least like to do it while not being able to hear his stupid sobbing.”**

Reaper turns the volume control. “Is this a CD player?” he asks, staring at the radio for a little too long and having to jerk the wheel when he looks up again. Thank god they were on a highway. “It _is_ a CD player. I can’t believe you own ancient obsolete technology of this trashy music. Actually, you know what? I can. Maybe that’s why I turned out like… this. Even if I didn’t realise it at the time, you were singing this shit to me for five years,” he eyes the ghost out of the corner of his eye, fully aware that he was babbling in an attempt to swallow the raw emotions eating his insides.

Gabriel pulls the beanie further down over his eyes, but cracks a smile. **“Ha. Maybe. But I’m pretty sure if you want to be a genuine edgelord, you actually have to like ‘this garbage’ as you so eloquently named it.”**

The song wails into the bridge:

 _You can run, but you can't hide_  
_Time won't help you  
_ _Cause karma has no deadline_

“Oooh, topical,” Reaper mutters, feeling a bit hollow at the memory of shooting the Soldier in the warehouse. It felt like _years_ ago. So much has happened. And so much will happen. Time is speeding up, dragging them closer and closer to the present. Reaper knows he doesn’t want to go back, doesn’t want to face it.

_Coward._

He sighs out a long breath and taps along with the chorus on the steering wheel. He glances at the ghost again. “I’m lying,” he finally admits aloud. “It’s a pretty good song.”

Gabriel peeks out from under his beanie, stares at Reaper for two seconds before he laughs. It’s genuine. Big and warm and it wraps around Reaper like a summer breeze.

**“Alright then. I’ll teach you the words. The only way to get over a breakup is to sing your broken heart out.”**

So they do. Reaper just drives in a straight line down the highway and they sing for hours.

Reaper feels heartbreak. Loss. He feels Gabriel’s chest ache. A longing.

But by the time the colors start to drain away once again, he also feels just a little bit more whole.

***

They hurtle towards the end. Falling faster and faster.

Gabriel has stopped tapping so Reaper takes it up instead. As they briefly flash through the white space, he taps on the bars and looks at the ghost beyond.

He misses the singing. Misses the noise. Is terrified for the moments he knows are surely coming. When his nanites will storm and frenzy and the world is nothing but pain.

There is no joy for him in that body.

In that life.

“That’s not true, you know,” Gabriel says quietly.

 **“How?”** Reaper whispers. How wasn’t it true. He had nothing. Was nothing. What was there to live for?

“Everything,” Gabriel says. “It’s not over just because we are returning to the beginning. Or the end. We have a chance to start again.”

Reaper shakes his head. _Not me. That life isn’t for me._ **“Because I am not you,”** the words are ragged. Ripped from his throat like a wounded dog. Too much truth contained in them. **“I can’t ever be you.”**

Gabriel looks at him from beyond the bars and reaches out—

The last few flashes before the end.

One of the ends.

They hurt.

***

The paper blurs together and Gabriel tries to blink the sleep out of his eyes.  
Sleep? Who is he kidding. He hasn’t slept more than two hours at a time for the last three months.  
But he’s close, he thinks as he pulls another stack of agent files towards him.  
Talon were meticulous but he can read between the lines.  
Find the gaps.  
He’s close.  
The office is cold and lonely.  
But he’s close.

*

He wakes, chest heaving after the nightmare.  
His hand reaches out. Reaches—  
That side of the bed is cold. Has been cold for a long while now.  
Gabriel squeezes his eyes shut against the dark, trying to breathe. Just breathe.  
He can’t—  
Gabriel clutches his chest as he chokes, trying to force air down his lungs, trying…  
Trying…  
A thought clings to him as he fades. Jack. He has to warn Jack.

*

He wakes.  
The white walls of the Watchpoint hospital blind him and he squeezes his eyes shut against the light.  
His lungs are on fire but he sucks down the air desperately. It hurts to breathe, but he has to get up. Has to get to work.  
“He’s awake,” the soft voice drifts over him, Swiss accent. Angela. “Commander, please lie still. The nanites need time to heal you.”  
_Nanites?_ Gabriel tries to get his mouth to work but it’s dry. Every breath he takes is like a tornado of razor blades down his throat.  
“Just lie back, it’s going to be ok.”  
Gabriel finally looks at her, focuses on the room rather than himself.  
Angela stands on his left, reading a tablet display intently. Jack—  
Jack is here. Their eyes meet, the blue looks dull, ringed by dark bruising under his eyes. The Strike Commander leans back against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. He wears only a ragged old t-shirt and sweatpants, like he dressed in a hurry.  
He looks like shit. Fragile is probably a better word. As though a light breeze could knock him over and he would simply shatter into a million pieces on the floor.  
Gabriel concentrates on breathing. On ignoring the hollow pit slowly opening in his stomach, and the fires of rage igniting his breath and adding to the pain in his lungs.  
_Breathe._  
“You have lung cancer, Gabriel,” Angela says.  
He blinks. _What? Cancer? What the fuck?_  
His bewildered questions must be written all over his face because Angela gives him a withering look. “My thoughts exactly. If you’d actually come to any of your scheduled check-ups in the past two years we would have caught it sooner. Now, you’re going to lie here for the next three days while the nanites eradicate it from your lungs.”  
_Shit_. Gabriel shakes his head. No, he can’t do that. Has work to do. He has to show… his eyes flick up to Jack. The evidence—  
“I’m pulling you off active duty.” Jack’s voice is ragged. Gabriel stares at him, barely believing what he hears. Jack doesn’t have the authority to do that, he would have needed to talk to the UN. Unless he already had… they would know. Overwatch…  
“You’ll kill us all,” he whispers, coughing when the pain in his lungs spikes.  
“Think that highly of yourself do you?” Jack pushes off the wall and walks over to him.  
The rage boils up and Gabriel’s hand snakes out and snatches the front of Jack’s shirt, dragging him down to stare straight into his eyes.  
“You’re going to listen to me. We can’t afford to wait any longer. In the third drawer down of my—  
“What the fuck, Gabe—  
Jack tries to get him to let go, but his grip is like iron.  
Gabriel shakes him and hisses, “shut the fuck up, Morrison, and listen for once in your goddamn life. My office. Third drawer down on the right. Code is 070420. You’ll need the key too.” He finally lets Jack go and the man stumbles back a few steps in surprise. Before he thinks too hard about it, Gabriel takes off his dog tags and unhooks the tiny encryption key from where it sits next to the tags and two rings.  
He holds out the key as Jack’s eyes flick down to the other items left on the tags then back up to his face. Jack licks his lips, looks stricken as he mechanically reaches out and takes the key.  
Gabriel thinks he’s about to say something.  
He waits. And when Jack doesn’t, he just leans back to slump on the pillows. He can’t look at Jack anymore. “Get out,” he says softly. Doesn’t bother to look at Jack’s retreating back as the footsteps fade.

*

“That’s a really shitty security code for highly classified information,” Jack’s rough voice comes out of the dark. “Nice to know one of us is still sentimental.”  
Gabriel blinks, peering into the darkness of the med bay. It had been over two days since he’d sent Jack to find all the information on the Talon investigation. He barely has the energy to reply. Can’t be fucked to think of something witty to say. Mostly because he just hurts. “For fuck’s sake Jack, what do you want? If you’ve come to be an asshole, just fuck off again and let me and my cancer nanites die in peace.”  
_Why did he think he was going to die?_  
Oh right. Talon would probably mobilise soon. If they haven’t already. Now would be the perfect time. Blackwatch Commander bedridden and off active duty. He knows this would be the point where he would attack. Would Talon?  
“It’s not a bad thing,” Jack whispers. He’s close, Gabriel can hear Jack’s ragged breathing. It hitches for a moment and Jack sighs out a shaky breath. “To be sentimental… I wondered…I wondered whether I ever really love anyone anymore… but. Fuck. I can’t do it… I’m sorry, Gabriel. I’m so fucking sorry. …I’ve fucked it up. I’m sorry,” the whisper becomes inaudible, but it’s the same three syllables over and over again.  
Gabriel lies in the dark. And he thinks, _I don’t forgive you_. So he says nothing.  
“Gabe, please. Say something.”  
_I don’t forgive you_. Gabriel closes his eyes and feels the weight of the two rings around his neck. “Why are we in the dark, Morrison?”  
“Because they’re watching,” Jack’s voice is barely audible.  
_Ah_. “Believe me now do you? Nice to know you’ll listen to evidence at least.”  
“I’m sorry.”  
“Mm, I noticed. What are you going to do about it?”  
“I… I opened an investigation. We’ll have to find them all and root them out…somehow.”  
Gabriel shakes his head sadly. “It’s too late for that. There’s no coming back from this Jack. You expose them, you expose Overwatch, Blackwatch, the whole thing. The corruption runs deep and it’s going to have to be burned out.”  
“What are you saying?” Jack’s voice wavers.  
“We’re not going to make it, Jackie. They’ll lynch us. Put us on trial, even if we do manage to take out Talon before they destroy us first. The world won’t hesitate. And we’re to blame. We let this happen.” He takes a deep breath; his lungs had stopped burning so much which was nice. At least the nanites were doing their job. “I’m ready to accept that. Are you?”  
Jack is silent for a long, long time.  
Eventually he speaks, and Gabriel has never heard such defeat in his voice. “I should have listened to you,” says Jack. “But yes, I am prepared. I’ll… I’ll be beside you. With you, if you want me.”  
_I don’t forgive you_ , Gabriel thinks.  
“Good. Now get out and let me sleep. Gotta be fit and healthy for our extensive public trial for treason.”

*

They never make it to the trial. Don’t even make it to the next morning.  
Gabriel jolts awake to the sound of a distant boom. The building shakes. In the seconds after the blinding white lights go out, red emergency ones flicker to life, pointing the way to the exits as various building alarms begin to sound.  
_Shit._  
He’s too late. One of the nurses comes running towards him, reaches into his lab coat—  
Gabriel leaps out of the bed and dives to the floor as the nurse fires two shots at his head. Then he rolls and kicks the agent’s legs out from underneath him, drives his elbow into the man’s solar plexus as he goes down, leaving him gasping for breath. Gabriel wrestles the handgun from the Talon Agent’s grasp, cocks it, and shoots the agent twice in the head.  
Feels that heaviness—  
Another boom shakes the building, closer now.  
_This is it_ , Gabriel thinks. _This is where it all ends._  
He glances down at the gun in his hand. Briefly checks the ammo and then clicks it back in. At least he wouldn’t go down without a fight.

*

Jack. He needs to find Jack.  
Four bodies litter the hallway behind him. Two his doing. The others…  
He limps onwards.

*

Falls against the wall. Leaves a bloody smear on the plaster.  
Coughs as the smoke enters his lungs and another blast rocks the building.

*

 _Jack_.  
He finds him. Jack stands in a dim hallway, lit only by red emergency strips, hands up as he faces three Talon agents all with their guns pointed towards him.  
The middle agent speaks to Jack, raises their gun.  
All three have their backs to Gabriel.  
Jack sees him. His eyes widen and he opens his mouth.  
The agent standing on the right begins to turn—  
Gabriel shoots the other two in the head first. Puffs of black ink spatter from the wounds, reflects in the red light of the hall as the bodies fall.  
The one who had turned shoots Gabriel before he can move his gun—  
He feels the bullet hit him. Chest. Lung.  
Falling. He’s falling backwards and he hears Jack yell; a sickening crunch follows and Gabriel feels the vibration of the Talon agent’s body hit the floor—

*

Jack gathers him into his arms. Says something, something like, _it’s going to be ok._  
_Yeah. It really isn’t._  
Gabriel feels his left lung burning. Blood chokes his throat as he struggles to breathe.

*

Something shakes him.  
He blinks and looks up into blue eyes.  
Or are they red? The light here is strange.  
Where is he?

*

He feels the rumbling before he hears it. As though the floor is about to erupt.  
He clutches onto something.  
Someone.  
And he thinks. _Not you too._

*

That someone drags him forward, following a trail of red.  
Gabriel feels himself dying.  
Not fast enough.  
_No one left behind._  
The rumbling doesn’t stop. It gets closer. Chases them.

*

Gabriel moves. The last of his strength goes just as he shoves Jack out of the way, through a door—  
Fire engulfs him.  
He falls.  
The building falls on top of him.

***

White space.

Divided by silver bars.

Silent.

***

Gabriel opens his eyes, but he can’t see.  
Can’t breathe.  
But he feels.  
He screams as his lungs burn. As they turn inside out. As they are eaten. Cannibalised.  
Broken nanites trying to repair too much damage.  
They need energy and they take it from his flesh.

*

He can’t move.  
The nanites shift and flow, swarming together, constantly eating and reproducing and dividing and falling apart—

Living.

Dying.

***

Reaper shrinks back from the bars that divide the strange, timeless place. Shrinks back from his ghost.

Shrinks back from the past.

Gabriel reaches towards him, arm outstretched as the bars dissolve—

And they both fall into the storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well... that got dark. This ship has caused me way too much pain, but lol, guess I've got to write my own too.
> 
> This chapter has by far been the hardest to write and edit so I hope you're still enjoying the story if you've stuck with it. And hey, we're almost at the journey's end! :D
> 
> (also, like, I hope the sex scene wasn't too silly. But tbh after several of the Blizz comics, I feel like Gabe is a pretty chill guy who doesn't take life all that seriously despite being head of a covert ops organisation. Or that copious amounts of sarcasm and humour are his way of dealing with the stress.)  
> Would love to know what you all think of the story so far! Your comments keep me strong <3 <3
> 
> P.S. The song playing in the car is "True Friends" by Bring Me the Horizon. That whole album is pretty edgy and great and I highly recommend it.
> 
> P.P.S. The story about Gabriel's favourite scar and a pretty crazy 'heroic misjudgement' on Jack's part (involving a kitten in a warzone) appears in the R76 zine The Skin of Our Teeth. Sadly preorders have closed, but if you missed out, a bunch of the artists involved should have copies available after the initial orders are mailed out :) [You can find the zine tumblr here to check out everyone else involved! ](https://r76zine.tumblr.com/)   
> I'll be posting it on AO3 soon so keep an eye out! :)


	7. The Ghost

_And I wonder, laying in my bed_  
_Am I still too young? Am I still too young?_  
_And I hold back, thoughts running through my head  
_ _Did I fuck it up? Did I fuck it up?_

         A$AP Rocky ft. Jamie Fox. _Max-B._

 

“Your name is Reaper,” the voice says. It speaks with deliberate slowness, annunciating each word. “You have a body you must make, and memories we require.”  
_A body?_  
Reaper feels like shifting sand. Devouring. Chaotic. There is only darkness in his reality.  
_A body._  
The voice speaks again. “The nanites have the memories of their last solid form. You will control them.”  
_Control._  
_Yes_. Reaper could control.  
He feels them. Finds them. Learns them. Discovers the pain of their hunger and desire.  
Reaper feels it all. He takes it and he uses it, moulds it into something solid. Reaper directs the nanites to their place, as if he is conducting a broken choir.  
He blinks his unseeing eyes until his vision begins to mist into focus.  
Jagged bones grind together and his insides shift and flow in a poor mimicry of life as the nanites pulse with a wild energy that strains against his control.  
Then, his nerve endings form for the first time. It sparks something that travels through the entirety of this new body and he _feels_ what it means to be broken. Reaper screams—

_—_ stumbles backwards. Naked feet against the cold floor of the Talon cell.

Reaper remembers this.

He remembers this moment he has fallen into because _he_ lived it.

He doesn’t want it. The body, the pain, the not-life.

He doesn’t want what he knows is coming.

So he backs away, gives it up. No control. He runs from it all.

The ghost fills the void he has vacated. At least, he tries to.

Gabriel shouts. A name, Reaper hears a name but he doesn’t listen, doesn’t want to know. Doesn’t want to _be—_

The nanites rip themselves apart into a thunderous storm.

And time drags them forward once again.

***

Gabriel falls beside him, reaches towards him in that voidless white space.

Reaper looks for the bars. The cage.

Gone.

***

The light of the full moon barely manages to break through the canopy of the massive pine trees towering above him as he walks through the garden. His footsteps are dulled by the fallen pine needles and a chill wind follows him through the night air, making the pines whisper a soft song.  
The assassin leans against one of the trees, so still that he almost misses her.  
“What are you doing here?” the softly spoken words have an edge to them, at odds with the smooth French accent.  
Reaper eyes her warily. He knows that she is Talon’s most successful field agent, captured from Overwatch and brainwashed into doing their bidding. He also knows that the man this body used to belong to knew her from back then. He wonders if she remembers this and that is why she is here. It’s a pity he doesn’t have the time to find out.  
“Taking a walk,” he manages to grunt. His nanites are buzzing with restless hunger and he had not wanted to stay in the Talon base tonight, lest he lose control and have them consume whatever energy is most easily found. In this case, it would be his fellow agents.  
Talon had not been pleased the first time that had happened.  
“Why are you taking a walk?” She lifts her head up so that a single strip of moonlight glints in her eye.  
Reaper is tiring of this. The effort it takes to stay in control makes him start to shake, his shoulders hunch, tensing with strain.  
“Couldn’t. Sleep.”  
Silence reigns. Reaper is about to leave her behind—  
“It gets easier you know.”  
He almost misses her words as they are snatched into the night by the quiet breeze.  
“Let the pain in. Become numb to it, and you will be free.” She pushes off from the tree and walks off into the night, keeping to the shadows between the trees.  
Reaper stares after her retreating form before sinking to his knees, feeling the nanites readying themselves to fight against his—

—Control. Reaper has no control.

Has never had control. Has never been able to give it up and become truly free.

He retreats from himself, from the pain of this body.

Feels Gabriel blink his eyes. Widens them as he holds out his hand in the silver moonlight, the metal claws glinting bright.

Gabriel screams as he falls to ash.

*

Reaper holds a bone-white mask in his silver-tipped hands.  
He traces the form of it.  
_This._ This was who he is.  
He brings it up to his eyes and covers a dead man’s face—

—Falls into himself and immediately back out again. He leaves the body behind.

Yet he feels the pain regardless of whether he wants it or not, even as the ghost that has haunted him all this time tries to fill what he has left behind.

But he can’t. Reaper curls in on himself as Gabriel falls apart and the nanites abandon their form.

***

“Reaper!” Gabriel yells as they fall into the white space once again. Gabriel tries to grasp his hand, fingers clawing for Reaper’s as they both tear through time, anguish written in the broken flesh he wears.

But Reaper doesn’t want this. He throws himself away from the ghost as they hurtle towards an inevitable end.

***

Reaper looks down at the body lying in the dark hallway. The left side has been obliterated by his devastating shotgun blast.  
The nanites feast upon it.  
Reaper tilts his head to the side and considers the body.  
Wonders who they had been. Whether they had memories. A life. Had people cared for them?  
Reaper wonders if he should even care.  
The bitterness of failure is like bile in his mouth, and he feels nauseous as the deep fire of hungry nanites fades to a dull ache—

—And still he doesn’t want it. Reaper runs from this moment. Runs from the memory of it. Runs from the reality of it.

Even sated, Gabriel cannot hold his body together and the nanites burst into a furious storm.

*

“Hey, Gabe,” Sombra drags out the ‘a’ as she taps a finger to the beak of his mask.  
Reaper thinks she means to intimidate him by knowing who’s face he wears under the mask, but he honestly couldn’t care less about a dead man. “I am not Gabriel Reyes,” Reaper replies anyway, pushing her away from him. The agents Talon recruits these days are ridiculous.  
“Oh, _lo siento._ My mistake,” she says as she rocks back on her heels. She taps a finger on her chin. “Who are you then?”

—Reaper flinches away from the question. From the body. From time.

Gabriel looks out of his eyes for just a moment, it’s all he has time for, as he whispers, “ _socorro_.”

Sombra frowns—

But Gabriel sees nothing more as he fragments into smoke.

*

Ana Amari looks into Reaper’s face and horror widens her eye. She flails backwards from his monstrous form—

A Soldier groans as he bleeds from a wound in his back—

—Gabriel fights the nanites as he comes undone.

*

Talon intel had said the old warehouse was one of Overwatch’s. Abandoned after the fall and full of broken and obsolete equipment. Talon wasn’t interested in the failed science experiments. They were, however, interested in the old Soldier who had been seen staking out the place.  
Reaper has been sent to discover what he is up to and to put an end to him if he gets the chance.  
He had encountered the Soldier—Jack Morrison—more than a couple of times now.  
He hoped this would be the last.  
Reaper takes a step towards the warehouse—

—Thrashes back from the inevitability they hurtle towards.

Collapses into a billion screaming nanites that feed him nothing but their own pain.

*

Reaper becomes smoke and ash as he stalks the Soldier.  
Pulse bullets try and shred his ghostly form, but they do nothing but bruise a couple of nanites on their way through.  
Reaper laughs as he rushes at the Soldier. Shoots the massive shotgun as soon as it has formed out of his smoke, a disembodied hand that catches the Soldier off-guard.  
He grunts as he stumbles back, turns around and runs as the rest of Reaper steps out of the storm to follow—

—and falls to join the dust on the floor as Gabriel tries to fill the hollow body Reaper has left behind. 

*

“Wait.” The word is ragged. Spat out of a ruptured lung.  
Reaper’s finger twitches on the trigger.  
“Please. Gabe. Come back. I know you’re in there,” the Soldier chokes out. He finally raises his head so that the red of his visor is looking up, straight at Reaper.  
Reaper shakes his head, amused. “Poor little Soldier. Your lost love is never coming back. He died with the rest of Overwatch.” He smiles, his finger tightening on the trigger.  
Just as the gun is about to go off, the Soldier uncurls his arm and something rolls out of his hand and onto the floor.

Something round.

Something blue.

Something clicks.

***

Reaper stumbles backwards, the gun falls from his grasp, bursting into a cloud of black smoke and screaming nanites that quickly devour themselves into nothing.

His body is fire. It is ice. It burns and consumes and he can’t—

Reaper looks out of the mask, pale white bone, sees the Soldier lying in a puddle of black ink. The fading blue light of the device that had fallen from his hand reflects on the red visor as the Soldier raises his head to look at Reaper. The back of the shelf beside him has been blown to pieces.

He feels the nanites tense, itch, crawl. Feels his grip slipping as the void opens beneath him.

_What have I done?_

The wave of guilt and shame rears its head, ready to crash over him—

He takes a step backwards.

And falls apart.

* * *

 

Smoke and ash swirl and swirl. Drifting slowly up and around them both as they stand in the dark. Dimly, he realises that this is his mind. Or Gabriel’s mind. He doesn’t know anymore. It doesn’t stop Reaper from looking around for the bars. The cage. Anything to hold back the ghost who stares at him with uncompromising eyes.

Reaper doesn’t want to face him. Doesn’t want to face this.

He doesn’t want this life because everything _hurts_. He feels it all, the deep itching of his bones and the pull of the void, and he knows that it was never his to feel.

Reaper steps back from his ghost.

_Coward._

Gabriel steps towards him.

But Reaper shakes his head, backing up faster and faster.

Running.

“You can’t run from me, Reaper. You can’t run from yourself.”

Reaper shakes his head, but no, it is Gabriel’s head. Gabriel’s body he wears in this dark and barren place.

He feels himself begin to crumble.

“That is not your face,” Gabriel says quietly as he keeps coming.

Reaper wears Gabriel’s face. He wears a ghost’s face and he was wrong.

“Give. It. Back.”

Reaper does, he becomes _his_ image, the only one that people saw. A mask. A hollow being hidden in the shadows of a hood. Because he was not Gabriel Reyes. Gabriel is alive.

“I’m sorry,” the words are whispered. Choked upon and dragged from his strangled neck out into that space. They echo around and around _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’msorrysorrysorry—_

Bleeding into one another until it is just a hurricane of screaming and Reaper is the one screaming because it _hurts. It hurts so much_.

And Gabriel is there, above him. He tilts his head like an owl and studies Reaper as he lies shivering and curled in a heap, arms around himself, trying to hide from it all.

Gabriel nods at the cowering form beneath him and Reaper hates himself in that moment. Hates that he knows Gabriel has accepted an apology that would never be enough.

He tries to crawl away from the man, his cowardice getting the better of him again. Unwilling to face his shame any longer than he has to.

Yet Gabriel still walks towards Reaper, hasn’t given up on the pitiful creature he has become.

Why? _Why?_

_Why won’t you hate me?_ Reaper desperately thinks.

“Everything I’ve done.” Reaper brandishes the words like a weapon, as if they can stop the ghost from coming for him. “The people I’ve killed for them.”

Gabriel doesn’t stop. He shuts his eyes briefly, as if remembering who they were, the nameless faces Reaper had been sent to kill while wearing his body.

“You had a chance to destroy me! To change what happened. Why didn’t you?” Reaper asks desperately. _Why didn’t you stop me?_

Gabriel looks away from him. He feels it then. Guilt. And it isn’t his own. “Because it was not my choice to make.”

“What?”

“I could have changed things. Maybe I could have stopped your existence. Perhaps it would have worked out.” Gabriel shakes his head and continues his walk forward. “But I don’t think that’s my choice to make. If I got the nanites removed, I wouldn’t have survived the blast. If I changed something in the past, I wouldn’t know when I died. If I changed something, no matter how big or small, someone else could have died. This was the only course of action I knew to be certain.” Gabriel’s nostrils flare. “And perhaps that makes me selfish, for knowing that I could have stopped countless deaths. But who knows how many more I could have caused.”

He looks sorry. He looks angry. Furious at himself. Slowly, Gabriel leans forward and holds out his hand. “Back during the war, you asked me what I wanted from you. I didn’t have a good answer then. I do now.” He takes a deep breath, “what I want from you, Reaper, is for you to make a choice. Because I need you. So that I can live.”

Reaper recoils from the hand.

A choice. _What choice?_

Gabriel wants to live. But… so does… so does Reaper.

Was it wrong for him to want to live?

“No.” Gabriel’s hand doesn’t waver. “I need you to help me,” he says quietly. “I need you to trust me when I say I promise I will help you live.”

“How could I possibly help you?” Reaper doesn’t take the hand. Doesn’t understand the offer Gabriel is making. Why would…

A choice.

Gabriel is silent. Then he says, slowly and deliberately, “I need you to control them.”

_Ah_. The nanites. So Gabriel really was a ghost. The only piece of himself that remained after the tiny robots killed him from the inside out. It was ironic, really. The same way Reaper was now in a position of control. He holds Gabriel’s life in his hands. Literally.

Because he’s the only one who can make the hands.

Reaper laughs. He laughs and laughs and it gets more hysterical as the offer in front of him doesn’t go away.

And Reaper knows that he’s going to take it. Knows the responsibility of the power he has. He could simply wipe Gabriel’s existence away. Take control and never give it back.

But he won’t.

How could he live with himself?

How would he be able to look the Soldier in the eye?

Reaper reaches towards the hand, about to take it when he hesitates. “If I do this,” he whispers, wondering if he should even ask. He shakes his head and pushes on. It is ok for him to want something in return. “If I do this, will you sing to me?”

Gabriel’s eyes widen. But then he smiles, eyes crinkling at the edges, softening the scarred remains of his cheeks and mouth.

Reaper still finds that it’s strange. Being smiled at.

“Yeah. Yeah, of course I’ll sing to you,” Gabriel says.

Reaper finally closes the distance, wraps his hand around the ghost’s and lets Gabriel pull him up—

He’s a storm of nanites, swirling like a twisting river, a raging current with no control. And it _hurts_.

He feels them. Millions of billions of screams, as the nanites hunger for energy, try to consume and rage and eat and die and live—

So he lets them. He feels everything, all at once, and he realises that this moment—this fragile moment before he uses the pain to wrangle them together—is when he gives in. He’s never really been in control. There’s an irony in that too.

He hears it then. That song. The one Gabriel’s abuelito sang to him when he was young. The one that Gabriel sang to Jack on that balcony all those years ago. The one he had sung to Reaper over the last five years.

He finally hears it. And he _listens._

He pulls the singing nanites together, tugging the pieces of Gabriel back into himself. Eyes first, he looks out into the dim warehouse. Then ears, and sound pops in, ragged breathing and a buzzing and a screaming. Who’s scream? His?

Reaper concentrates on the song instead, and uses its rhythm to spin himself out of the smokey nanites. Hands solidify on the cold concrete floor. Withered and scarred, they curl into claws and scrape furrows on the concrete as he covers them with the silver-tipped gloves.

The rest comes more easily. His back, arched over like a stretching cat as he kneels on the warehouse floor. Coat over the top, metal supports holding a broken spine in place.

Reaper takes a single breath and looks up at the ghost of Gabriel Reyes. He reaches out a hand, holds out the clawed and broken thing he had taken, and offers it back.

“Thank you,” says Gabriel and he takes Reaper’s hand.

Reaper holds onto the body, the nanites. He holds them tightly, but he doesn’t control them. He watches Gabriel stare at his hands, encased as they were in the black leather gloves. Gabriel flexes them slowly and Reaper feels his marvel. Delight.

Tentatively, Gabriel reaches up to his face and pulls off the mask. Pulls off Reaper’s mockery of it. His shame.

Reaper uses his ghostly form to kneel beside Gabriel and look at his ruined face. He’s missing half a cheek and most of his nose. A good number of the teeth showing through half of his flayed mouth have been shattered into sharp points and embedded into the gums. Deep gashes run up his face and into his hairline, now a salt and pepper grey. Gabriel reaches up and twirls a claw around one of the locks.

“I had been meaning to cut it,” the voice is deep and grating. Pulled up through broken vocal cords and a shredded throat.

Reaper shrugs, he’d never really noticed it. **“Looks fine to me.”**

Gabriel cracks a smile that stretches his scars and exposes more of his shattered teeth. “Did you ever look into a mirror?”

**“Yes.”** Reaper just hadn’t looked for very long. Besides, other people’s faces had been more than enough of a reflection for him. That was before he’d created the mask— _his_ face. **“You look better when you’re not dead.”**

Gabriel snorts and his breathing catches as the nanites shift and threaten to struggle for a moment, the aching pain in his lungs jolting both of them. “Ah,” Gabriel says through gritted teeth. He slowly sits up, moving the body that Reaper held together—neither in control, but both working in harmony. “You know, you’re kind of funny when you’re not such an asshole.”

Reaper shrugs and looks down at the mask Gabriel holds in his hands. **“Never really had a chance to not be an asshole.”** He supposes he could start now. He wonders at that. How does one just _not_ be an asshole? Is it a conscious thing?

“Well, I think you’re doing a great job. Keep at it,” the words come out slightly strangled as Gabriel dissolves into a coughing fit, damaged lungs struggling to get enough air. The coughs are wet, and Gabriel spits a glob of black bile from his mouth. It dissolves slowly into wisps on the floor, nanites reaching up and trying to re-join their brethren.

Reaper rides out the pain, using it to hold them more firmly together. **“Don’t talk so much.”**

“I’m a man of many words, so forgive me if I don’t take your advice. I also haven’t spoken in five years. Got a lot to say to this dumbass,” Gabriel points towards the bleeding Soldier.

Reaper feels his heart still… or is it Gabriel’s heart? It hadn’t exactly beat properly in the time Reaper had been its keeper. It’s not like he had had much use for it. So why are the nanites reacting this way now?

“That’s all you, buddy,” mutters Gabriel. He rubs a hand over the left side of his chest and Reaper feels an aching, a hurting. Gabriel sucks in a breath, “and that’s me.”

_This is very confusing_ , thinks Reaper. He turns his attention to the source of their shared heart problems.

“Problem is a good way to put it. Like a bad case of heartburn I can’t get rid of.” Gabriel stands up, swaying for a moment. Reaper puts out his ghostly arms, ready to catch him, before realising that he’s a ghost. Gabriel has himself under control though, and he slowly walks forward, step by heavy step. Each time a boot hits the ground it reminds Reaper of the tolling of a bell, of an ending getting inevitably closer.

They stop in front of the fallen Soldier. He lies slumped against the shelves; shallow breaths hiss out from between his teeth. The puddle of blood surrounding him is only slightly larger than before they had rudely been thrown backwards in time. It feels like _decades_ ago now. It was technically decades ago. Relatively.

Gabriel kneels beside the unconscious Soldier. His hands flutter over the Soldier’s body an inch away from touching before he stops. Gabriel looks at the clawed gloves, and then up at Reaper. “Do you mind? They’re not exactly appropriate for a medical emergency.”

Reaper concentrates for a second and the gloves dissolve. **“Are you really going to help him?”** Jack hadn’t exactly been… good at the end.

Gabriel’s hands pause as he’s searching through the Soldier’s jacket. He looks up at Reaper and Reaper _feels_ the force of his eyeroll. “Are _you_ really asking _me_ that question?”

Reaper folds his arms and looks away in embarrassment. If he had a face, he would be blushing. **“Yeah, ok. That was a stupid question.”**

“No such thing as stupid ques—Ah, found it.” Gabriel is holding up a small device he had pulled from one of the Soldier’s numerous pockets. Reaper recognises it as a biotic emitter, good field healing equipment. Not that it worked on damaged nanites.

Gabriel sets to work peeling off the layers of the Soldier’s jacket and undershirt, muttering darkly about how much of an idiot Jack was for not wearing bullet-proof flex armor. _Almost as though he wanted to die_ , the thought flits between the two of them and Reaper feels Gabriel’s eyes on him.

He takes the time to examine the Soldier instead. Reaper had never really _looked_ before, hadn’t seen anything other than the idea of Strike Commander Morrison, a man Talon had assured him he should hate. Jack’s receding hairline is completely white now, no trace of blonde left. A deep scar, faded pink, peeks out of the dark red visor that covers most of his face. Reaper wonders if the eyes beneath it are just as blue as he remembers.

“Alright Jackie, I’m going to lay you down now. Make it easier on the emitter to do its job.” Gabriel gently puts his hands under the Soldier’s arms and carefully moves him to lay on the floor. The Soldier doesn’t wake up, but the breathing gets a little more ragged.

Gabriel cracks the biotic emitter and suddenly their corner of the warehouse is flooded with golden light. Reaper can feel its warmth radiating outwards, caressing the nanites like a soft embrace.

Gabriel moves to gently take off the Soldier’s visor and sighs when he finally sees Jack’s face. “Honestly Jack,” he mutters, “how do you manage to still be this beautiful.” There’s a little bitterness there too, but Gabriel moves past it and sits down on the cold concrete floor, pillowing Jack’s head on his lap.

Then he waits.

Jack’s breathing gets less strained as the minutes drag by. His biotic technology must be state of the art. Gabriel and Reaper both watch the skin closing over the shotgun wound as the golden light works on it.

**“What are you going to say to him?”** Reaper asks.

Gabriel shrugs. “Depends what he says to me.”

Reaper nods, and settles in on the other side of Jack to wait. Absently he taps Gabriel’s rhythm on his knee. Gabriel fiddles with his hands, tapping his fingers together, flexing them as he attempts to feel again. He notices a lump under Jack’s shirt, traces its outline back up to Jack’s neck and pulls out a set of ID tags. Gabriel snorts and shakes his head. “Honestly Jack. And you called me the sentimental one.” He holds the tags out for Reaper to see. One tag has Jack’s details on it, the other Gabriel’s, and resting beside them both were two tarnished rings.

Gabriel tucks the old tags back under Jack’s shirt just before his breathing hitches. The Soldier’s eyelids flutter as he drags himself back into the waking world.

“Well, good evening, Sunshine. So nice of you to rejoin the world of the living,” Gabriel gives the Soldier his biggest, most horrific smile.

It drops a touch, lips pulling down, when the Soldier flinches in his lap, eyes going wide as he stares up at the ghost above him.

“Gabriel?”

“The one and only.”

“You’re dead,” the broken whisper is barely audible.

“Well yes,” Gabriel leans over Jack, hood casting his ruined face in shadow as he fixes Jack with a piercing glare. “And who’s fault is that?”

“Oh my god,” Jack’s gravelly voice breaks and he tries to move out of Gabriel’s lap. “You’re alive.” And then, as he realises, Jack chokes out, “oh god, you’re alive.” Reaper hears the utter anguish in his voice. Hears that pain, that hurt. _Loss_.

He hears the guilt. The shame.

“Gabe,” Jack sits up, grunting at the pain in his side. He looks down at the barely healed wound, doesn’t seem to care about the pain as he stretches it so he can turn and face Gabriel. Jack reaches a hand up to Gabriel’s ruined face, but he stops barely an inch away.

“Is it you? Really you? What are you doing here?” the disbelief covers something else in Jack’s voice. Reaper almost doesn’t catch it.

“Saving you, asshole,” Gabriel says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

Jack’s eyebrows pull down as realisation and suspicion hit him. He drops his hand and leans back from Gabriel. “Why?” he asks.

Reaper contemplates the Soldier. _Ah_ , so Jack thought it might be some kind of ploy. Reaper pretending Gabriel is back from the dead. He almost laughs at that.

Jack hadn’t even considered the idea that Gabriel might actually want to save him.

Might want him to live.

Gabriel narrows his eyes, chases Jack forward until their foreheads are almost touching. “Look into my eyes and tell me that I don’t have a very good reason, Jack. I fucking dare you.”

Jack looks, _really_ looks. Reaper can feel Gabriel’s heart beat faster and faster. He breathes hard, like he’s just run a marathon. Like he faces his greatest enemy. Or his best friend, and awaits his judgement.

Jack swallows visibly, and closes the distance between them, leans his head against Gabriel’s. He shuts his eyes for a moment and when he opens them again, the blue glistens in the golden light of the emitter.

“Why didn’t you let me die?” Jack whispers. He searches Gabriel’s face for an answer that will make sense.

“Because I don’t want you to die, Jackie. I just lived through most of my life for a second time so I could see your stupid face again.”

“But… why?”

Reaper realises then, that Jack doesn’t understand. Refuses to understand. He feels Gabriel tremble as he recognises the same thing. Feels the hurt underneath the pain of the nanites.

Gabriel sighs. “I don’t know, Jack.” He sounds tired, a weary traveller just trying to come home. “Why do you think?”

Jack just shakes his head. Reaper understands this feeling. Denial. Jack has forgotten what Reaper told him all those years ago.

“Why don’t you hate me?” Jack chokes out. He grasps the folds of Gabriel’s leather coat in his fists, knuckles turning white. “After everything I’ve done. After I left you behind to die,” the last part Jack whispers, voice strangled. Before he hangs his head and leans forward, buries his face into the hard armour of Gabriel’s chest.

“Why does everyone want me to hate them this evening?” Gabriel flicks his eyes up to Reaper briefly and they share a knowing look. “That makes it too easy for you, doesn’t it?” He shakes his head at Jack’s trembling form. “I don’t hate you. I will never hate you. I think you’re an idiot and a fool and a fucking failure all at once, but I don’t hate you.”

“Why? Why not?” Even to Reaper, Jack sounds like he’s clutching at something. As if he was a delicate vase slowly falling to the floor, waiting for that moment where he would shatter into a million pieces as he faces the consequences of his actions. As he faces himself and hates what he finds.

Gabriel sucks in a breath, holds it, then huffs it out all at once. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I didn’t consider hating you during the five years I spent as a disembodied ghost taking up a marginal amount of space in the back of an AI’s mind while he controlled my body and went around shooting people for a terrorist organisation. No, I thought about hating you a _lot_. Like, a _lot._ Nearly every. Waking. Moment. Which was _every_ goddamn moment because this body doesn’t sleep—

Jack cuts in, “it’s all I deserve, please Gabe—

“Shut the fuck up Morrison and let me speak,” Gabriel doesn’t raise his voice, just moves on, as if Jack hadn’t interrupted. Jack shuts his mouth. Looks quietly terrified as he awaits his judgement. But Gabriel hurtles onwards. “I said I _considered_ it. I thought, you know, this motherfucker broke up with me, was too stupid to listen to me, the only person you should have had any reason to trust at the end, who didn’t even _look_ at me anymore… but then, even after all that, tried to fucking _save_ me—

Gabriel grinds his teeth together. “So, I considered hating you. But then I realised that would have been far too easy. Far too easy to give _you_ a reason to hate yourself, if there was nobody left to love you.”

If Jack was slowly hurtling towards that inevitable impact before, it hits the man all at once now. Reaper watches Jack _fragment_. Anguish written in his features as he realises that the man with every single reason to hate him, never stopped loving him.

“It wouldn’t have been honest to hate you either,” Gabriel says quietly. “So I thought, what if I actually _want_ to see this asshole again? Obviously, I couldn’t, what with Reaper being such a control freak—

**“Sorry,”** Reaper mutters.

Gabriel waves it away and continues on, “you wanted to die Jack? Why did you throw us back in time? You never could give up so easily. And in a way, I’m glad. Because that was somehow the only way I could conceivably get my body back.”

“Reaper…” Jack says slowly. “The AI?” Then, he blinks. “Wait, you went back in time?”

“What did you think the tiny blue grenade did?” Gabriel asks, exasperated.

“I…” Jack begins. Then he curls in on himself. Puts his head in his hands. “I don’t know. I just couldn’t bare that it was over. That it would end by the hands of that _thing_ controlling you.”

Reaper swallows and looks away.

Gabriel’s voice is cold. “That _thing_ is the only reason I’m here right now. Is the only reason you’re alive.” Gabriel pauses to let that sink in and then his lips curl up in a smile, “you’re unbelievable, you know that? Pretty glad I counted on that while I was falling through time.”

Reaper feels like he should be suspicious at that comment, but he mostly just feels numb looking at the harm he has wrought.

“He’s sorry for shooting you by the way,” Gabriel pokes Jack’s shoulder.

“Sorry for shooting me…? He’s still here?” Jack looks around wildly, searching for someone who only existed as a ghost.

Someone who stares right at him. Reaper feels a tiny pang in his chest. A strange emotion he’s not really sure he understands. **“I never said I was sorry,”** Reaper says indignantly to Gabriel, trying to distract himself from whatever was making his chest burn with phantom pain.

“Would you like to?” Gabriel fixes him with his stare. Uncompromising.

Reaper is caught. Jack squints at him, unseeing.

He feels that pang again. Stronger now, it coalesces like smoke around his not-heart, unbeating but still utterly filled with this emotion.

_Longing._

Reaper swallows as Gabriel finally looks away from him, a satisfied smile dancing on ruined lips.

Because Reaper would very much like to say some things to Jack Morrison.

He would very much like Jack to see him again.

“Who are you talking to?” Jack asks quietly. He’s still trying to squint into the darkness. Still trying to see Reaper. “Who’s there?”

Reaper finds himself longing for Jack to see him again.

Gabriel holds out a hand to Reaper. An offering. A choice.

Reaper tentatively reaches out—

—and looks right into Jack’s ice-blue eyes. “Fuck you, Jack Morrison,” Reaper says. He taps the rhythm onto Jack’s chest as he watches those eyes widen and the chiselled jaw drop.

He hears Gabriel’s ghost snort from beside him.

“Fuck you. For everything. For throwing us back in time. For making me live through a life that wasn’t mine. For making me eat your stupid bacon,” Reaper’s tapping grows faster as the words tumble from Gabriel’s ruined mouth, his voice deep and grating and full of a feeling he can’t name. “Fuck you for being so kind, and fuck you for being such an asshole. Fuck you for saving the world. Fuck you for leaving him. And fuck you for not listening when you should have and letting Overwatch fall. Fuck you for doing this to him. For leaving him behind. And fuck you… for making me exist. For making me think I have some kind of choice in the matter.” Reaper curls his hand into the thin fabric of Jack’s shirt and pulls the man so close the only thing Reaper can see is those endless blue eyes.

_Fuck you… for making me…_

_For making…_

_I can’t…_

Reaper feels that moment again. That hand on his shoulder—

He _can’t._

Refuses.

“I’m done now,” he mutters for the ghost’s benefit as he leans away from Jack.

**“You forgot the last thing,”** Gabriel looks surprised as he appraises Reaper. A tiny smile tugs up the corner of his mouth.

Jack swallows as he looks at Reaper. Really looks.

And in a way, he finally sees him.

Reaper lets go. “Sorry,” he grates out before vacating the borrowed body so fast Gabriel blinks in surprise when he returns.

Reaper turns his back on the both of them as they begin to talk quietly.

He doesn’t particularly feel like he should be privy to any of this, while at the same time recognises that he got dragged through nearly all of it.

In the end, he decides not to listen. He taps his rhythm and waits for them to work out what they were going to do with each other now that they didn’t have to deal with him. He concentrates on Gabriel’s body instead. The nanites still screamed with pain, still hurt as they tried to break free of his grip, but now Reaper also feels them sing. They ebb and flow when Gabriel speaks. It makes Reaper wonder at just how much emotion he’s been missing out on, at how much had felt good in the past and whether there would be a possibility of it being better in the future. He clings to Gabriel’s promise like a lifeline through the pain.

There’s a moment in the conversation behind him, where he feels Gabriel sigh, feels the tension drain from his shoulders as though he has finally reached a moment where he can let go.

Reaper turns and watches as Gabriel folds over Jack, leaning his forehead on the old Soldier’s as Jack closes his weary eyes and lies against Gabriel’s chest.

“You’re unbelievable,” Gabriel mumbles into Jack’s hair.

“And you’re an impossibility,” Jack whispers back. Then his breath evens out and he sighs into sleep.

Gabriel scrubs a hand across his eyes. He dabs at the corner of one eye and studies his finger, mouth twisting down. “No tears, huh?”

**“No… do they help?”** Reaper asks.

Gabriel gives him a tired little smile. “Not really, but also sort of. Like a release that you don’t ever ask for, kind of hate during it, but still feel much better afterwards.”

**“Ah, like that time in the car?”**

“Yeah, kinda like that, except it’s more the opposite now.” Gabriel sighs. “It’s complicated.”

It sounds very complicated and not at all like something he wants to experience again.

“I wouldn’t be so fast to discount it,” Gabriel says.

**“It sounds and feels like more trouble than it’s worth.”**

“Perhaps. But then again, perhaps it’s all worth the trouble simply to have someone who inspires those feelings within you.” Gabriel looks back down at Jack. “What’s the fucking point otherwise?”

**“The point?”**

“The point of living. Of fighting. Of existing. I fight for the ones I love, no matter how much pain and hurt they cause me. What do you fight for?”

_What do you live for?_

The unspoken question hangs between them for a long, long time. Reaper doesn’t have an answer to it. At least not yet.

“A promise is a promise,” Gabriel says softly.

Reaper would hold him to it.

Gabriel traces the lines of Jack’s sleeping face. From the angle Reaper is sitting, the golden light of the biotic emitter shines up onto the good half of Gabriel’s face. It softens him in a way Reaper hasn’t seen before. Almost makes him look like a young man again.

“I _am_ a young man,” Gabriel says reproachfully, he ruins the stern tone with a grin. “Jack’s older than me now. And he looks it.” One of his fingers curls around Jack’s ghostly white hair dragging it upwards and letting the light of the emitter almost give it a blonde hue again.

Reaper didn’t think Jack looked that bad, but then, he’d lived half of Gabriel’s life up until now and still didn’t exactly have a standard from which to judge.

Gabriel looks up at Reaper, chews on the un-ruined cheek while he appraises the ghost.

Reaper folds his arms and stares right back.

“You know,” Gabriel starts, “I never did get to ask a truth from you back during our little slumber party.”

Reaper blinks. Or he would if he had eyes. This was not a direction he wanted the conversation going. No. He’s faced way too many truths in the past half an hour—an entire lifetime—to want to face anymore.

“But you haven’t even _considered_ the most important one of all,” declares Gabriel. He has a shit-eating grin on his face. Mischievous. It reminds Reaper of the kid who gave death two middle fingers and jumped off a building, laughing all the way down. “Plus, it’ll be fun. _And_ you promised.”

Reaper huffs out a breath. Mentally prepares himself for whatever Gabriel is about to say. **“Fine. Ask your question.”**

“Now there’s the slumber party spirit,” Gabriel says. He pauses for a moment, looks down at the sleeping Soldier, gathering his thoughts.

Reaper is hit by a sudden wave of uneasiness. Thinks that perhaps this was a bad idea.

Too late.

Gabriel looks back up at him, biotic light reflecting a galaxy in his deep brown eyes. “So, Reaper… when did you realise you were in love with Jack?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well there it is. This fic took me forever, but honestly, I’m really proud of it. It’s definitely the biggest story I’ve ever written and edited to completion. I hope you enjoyed reading it and it didn’t get too confusing along the way.
> 
> Some valuable lessons I learned while writing this:
> 
> 1\. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Or, don’t sign up to a Big Bang, a zine, start a different long-form fic, and try and complete your Master’s dissertation all at once. It ain’t gonna happen.  
> 2\. Don’t apply for jobs and attempt to edit at the same time. Job applications are more soul-sucking than Reaper before the nerf.  
> 3\. Please, god, you need to understand the scope of the story in the planning stage. I was aiming for 25k with this. Lol.  
> 4\. Wow, that Philosophy of Time course I took back in undergrad turned out to not be totally useless after all.
> 
> I also met some great people along the way. Mad props to the organisers of the Reaper76 Big Bang (I think reversal big bang is happening now too – [go check it out](https://reaper76bigbang.tumblr.com/)). Fandom is pretty great when people organise events like these and I’m thankful I got to be a part of it!
> 
> The incredible art from this chapter (and previous chapters) are from two amazing artists that took a chance on my crazy description for the fic. I can’t thank you guys enough!
> 
> I’ve loved having convos with [Liripip](http://liripip.tumblr.com/) throughout the writing process. Thanks for the support :’) Go check out their blog! :D
> 
> [Ohappyfair](http://ohappyfair.tumblr.com/) is rad as hell and you should also check out their other art!
> 
> And massive thanks again to [Princeinky](http://princeinky.tumblr.com/) for beta reading this. 
> 
> Next project: I do want to finish The Shadow of Your Breath (and I have a bunch of pre-written stuff for it) so that’s on the cards. But I’m probs going to take a break and do some OC stuff for nano and to get me into the new year :) 
> 
> Thank you so much for all the kind comments! I would love to know what you thought of the story as a whole! <3 <3

**Author's Note:**

> It's a wild ride from here on out!
> 
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/Jakallx) and [tumblr](http://jakallx.tumblr.com/)


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